It all started when Scot from TwoRags IM'd me to ask if I was going to the LA Poker Classic. I explained to him, as I wrote 2 days ago in my last entry, that I most likely was not. He said that was too bad as TwoRags has some connections in the area with the Commerce etc (I'm pretty sure he lives in LA)... and he had some special events planned. This was somehwat enticing but I still wasn't too interested. Nonetheless I checked the schedule of events again on the CardPlayer website and it turned out it was much better than I remembered. I thought it was basically all $1000 buy-ins with one $2500 and one $1500 mixed in or something. It turns out there are three $2500 events though (one is limit holdem but that's ok), a couple $1500s, and then several smaller ones. Not so bad I thought....
Kyle (grafyx) had asked me if I was going since he needed a roommate. I'd of course said no at the time but I messaged him back and he was still looking for one and had already done the work looking into hotel rooms. So I then decided to go ahead and have a look at flights just in case. It turns out Air Canada has a seat sale on and I could book a round trip flight for just $400. Well now... It seemed like everything was just falling into place but I still wasn't sure. I had to check how this fit my schedule. Ideally I would show up for the $2500 event on Monday the 11th, the first of the big events, and then stay until the end. I have Raptors tickets for the 8th and had made plans a while ago with a friend for that night. Perfect timing there. I also have tickets for the game on the 20th, but Scot said he might be able to hookup a Lakers game for us there, so that's at least an even tradeoff. Damn, I guess someone out there really wants me in LA. And finally, I'm up around $40K so far this month online, so even if I 0-for another series losing 20-30K down there wouldn't be the end of the world. LA, here I come.
Anyways to add some poker to this here are some cash hands. I realize I haven't posted any cash game stuff in a while and that's one thing I want to do more of. I'm going to concentrate on some hands from my best session of the month. I'm playing two 25/50 NL full ring tables with this fish VARBED. When there's a big fish playing way too many hands it basically becomes a big fight among the other players to try to get his money. I'm going to be raising almost anything playable to try to isolate him when he limps in, or sometimes limping behind speculative hands hoping to flop big on him. That's the dynamic that is important in these hands.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2020495 - The session actually got off to a poor start with this cooler. I think the lead on the flop is the best way to get max value from AK or AQ.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2020483 - He liked to minraise with all sorts of garbage so I put in a reraise here to isolate him in position with the best hand. Postflop I have to figure I have the nuts against a player like this, especially given his weak little lead, so no slowing down to control pot size here, I want to get stacks in.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2020506 - This biggest pot I won was actually not from VARBED but resulted because of the dynamic he created. As I'd been isolating him a lot with weakish hands trying to keep him to myself, the other players obviously pick up on what I'm doing and want to stop me so that they can play more pots with him too, so the obvious idea is to just reraise me. I'd had to fold to these reraises a couple times but this time I have a hand I can make a stand with. I make a smallish reraise to $2250 to make it look like I have room to fold if he moves in on me, and give him the chance to make a bad bluff. Fortunately that's exactly what happened and I won a big pot.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2020523 - I got really lucky here. He telegraphs his hand as a big one preflop and gives everyone the odds to try hit a flop on him and crack it. Luckily I'm able to do just that. I guess either leading or checkrasing here are both good options on the flop, I went for the lead again.
Mike
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Monday, January 28, 2008
A decent little week capped off with some rare Sunday success
Hey everyone, I'm back safely in Toronto just chilling. Really it was a super lazy week. Anyways my plan for the next couple months is to get back to really griding online and putting in some hands. I've had a lot of fun lately travelling around, and while I play a lot of poker on those trips, if I really want to make some money I'm much more profitable online. Even though the games are tougher on average, being able to play 4-8 tables at once just lets me play so many more hands that live can't really compete. Also, being able to table select across multiple sites allows me to find the best games to help offset the generally tougher opponents. Also, it's important for me to play a lot more cash game hands since my hourly rate is much higher in those than in almost any tournament assuming I can find good games.
Tthis week I put in a decent number of hours playing both tournaments and cash games, and was lucky to run pretty well so I turned a nice profit. I've been playing 10/20 and 25/50 on mostly some of the smaller sites, and the games have been pretty good. I've also been playing the usual evening and weekend tournaments, and after a ton of close calls and a lot of frustration I finally broke through for a nice score in a major Sunday tournament, the new "Sunday Brawl" on Full Tilt. It's a $240 buy-in where $200 goes to the prize pool like usual and $40 goes towards your bounty, meaning whoever busts you gets your $40. Of course whenever you bust anyone you get their $40 bounty, so it's a nice little twist added to the usual tournament format. It certainly adds a little incentive to go out of your way to try to bust people, though the strategic adjustments required are nothing major as the bounties are not too big compared to the prize pool. This week's tournament had almost 1600 runners.
I managed to finish 5th for $19K, plus I believe 8 bounties ($320) to top it off. The final table was both lucky and unlucky for me. I picked up more premium hands than I ever have in such a short period at a final table, but unfortunately they did not hold up in some key pots. I lost a big coinflip with TT vs AKs, and then on the very next hand I slowplayed KK by just calling a raise. A shortstack moved in behind me with AK, the raiser folded and I called, but an ace flopped for the 2nd hand in a row. Fortunately as I'd been picking up so many hands I still had some chips left and managed to double up and hang around for a while, but eventually I lost another all-in preflop as a decent favourite (KQs vs JTo) on the shortstack to bust 5th. Still, it was nice to make a major final table and book a nice win for the weekend. The 1600ish players was the biggest field I've ever gotten through to the final table since my $10 freezeout days. Like I mentioned I had close calls in several other tournaments, in particular the late $100 rebuy where I finished 16th for $2K.
So the plan for coming weeks is to keep putting in a lot of hands and get myself nicely into the black on the year. There's a small chance I may decide to go to the LA Poker Classic for the main event and the legendarily soft cash games at the Commerce towards the end of February, but most likely I won't be playing any more live events until EPT Monte Carlo (the one in Europe not the one that was on fire in Vegas) in April, and possibly the EPT in Italy just before Monte Carlo. Well I'm out. Take it easy,
Mike
Tthis week I put in a decent number of hours playing both tournaments and cash games, and was lucky to run pretty well so I turned a nice profit. I've been playing 10/20 and 25/50 on mostly some of the smaller sites, and the games have been pretty good. I've also been playing the usual evening and weekend tournaments, and after a ton of close calls and a lot of frustration I finally broke through for a nice score in a major Sunday tournament, the new "Sunday Brawl" on Full Tilt. It's a $240 buy-in where $200 goes to the prize pool like usual and $40 goes towards your bounty, meaning whoever busts you gets your $40. Of course whenever you bust anyone you get their $40 bounty, so it's a nice little twist added to the usual tournament format. It certainly adds a little incentive to go out of your way to try to bust people, though the strategic adjustments required are nothing major as the bounties are not too big compared to the prize pool. This week's tournament had almost 1600 runners.
I managed to finish 5th for $19K, plus I believe 8 bounties ($320) to top it off. The final table was both lucky and unlucky for me. I picked up more premium hands than I ever have in such a short period at a final table, but unfortunately they did not hold up in some key pots. I lost a big coinflip with TT vs AKs, and then on the very next hand I slowplayed KK by just calling a raise. A shortstack moved in behind me with AK, the raiser folded and I called, but an ace flopped for the 2nd hand in a row. Fortunately as I'd been picking up so many hands I still had some chips left and managed to double up and hang around for a while, but eventually I lost another all-in preflop as a decent favourite (KQs vs JTo) on the shortstack to bust 5th. Still, it was nice to make a major final table and book a nice win for the weekend. The 1600ish players was the biggest field I've ever gotten through to the final table since my $10 freezeout days. Like I mentioned I had close calls in several other tournaments, in particular the late $100 rebuy where I finished 16th for $2K.
So the plan for coming weeks is to keep putting in a lot of hands and get myself nicely into the black on the year. There's a small chance I may decide to go to the LA Poker Classic for the main event and the legendarily soft cash games at the Commerce towards the end of February, but most likely I won't be playing any more live events until EPT Monte Carlo (the one in Europe not the one that was on fire in Vegas) in April, and possibly the EPT in Italy just before Monte Carlo. Well I'm out. Take it easy,
Mike
Saturday, January 19, 2008
$5K HU and $2K 6-max
So I bubbled both of these. I played pretty well though, there were some sweet hands. In the first round of the HU I played Doug Lee. As far as I know he's basically a terrible spewbox, but I didn't play very well against him and didn't make many hands. Fortunately I luckboxed some coinflips to scrape by after losing the first game in the best of 3. In the next round I played Anna Wroblewski. I thought she was spewy aggro too but she was actually kind of solid but on the passive side. Anyways in this match I stopped being a pussy like I was against Lee and started trusting my hand reading to make some good river calls.
Hand 1: She limps and I check T3o in the BB. Flop J73 chk/chk. Turn Kc starting a possible flush draw. I check/call her bet. River K, I check, she bets and I figure enough draws and stuff missed that I should call and beat her 45.
Hand 2: She limps I check 96o. Flop 644, both check. Turn 5, I bet 3/4 pot she calls. River 2, I check and she bets some normal amount. I don't think she'd call the turn with just a 3, but probably would with a 7 which she'd be likely to bluff with here, so I call and win again.
I ran pretty good against Anna and made some hands at key times to win the match 2-0. In the third round I played timex though and he kicked my ass. I got behind in both, then won key races to get the lead, then lost really key races to lose. Fortunately we had traded a lot of % so I still got some money out of this tournament.
Today was the $2K 6-max which had a really great structure. I was doing really well for a while, and played some pretty interesting hands, unfortunately I busted 29th when 24 paid in the end though.
Hand 1: There's an aggressive player on my left who's 3-bet light already preflop against other players but not me. I can tell from the way he's played other hands though that he really knows what he's doing, he's not just some crazy spewtard. At 75/150 I open A6s UTG 5-handed to 450 with about 12K. I've been semi-active and as Im putting the chips for my raise in the pot I'm thinking this guy is going to 3-bet me soon, possibly this hand in fact. He quickly makes it 1350 and it folds back to me. It's a lot easier to trust your read and make a biggish move in a situation like this when you can predict his move, so I make it a goofy 3350 representing a monster but leaving room to fold to a push and he folds.
Hand 2: I've since 4-bet the same guy again, this time with AK, and had him fold again, and also been raising a ton of pots since I keep picking up pretty good hands and opening. It folds to me in the SB, I now have 15K and the BB covers, and I raise to 450 with A4ss. BB calls and we see a flop of 663 2 spades. I bet 600 and he makes it 1600. I don't really believe him because he's some middle aged guy and they would almost always slowplay trips here to trap the young overaggressive kid, but we're deep enough that I don't really want to pop him back since if he does happen to have a big hand I would pot-commit myself in a bad spot. Also my ace-hi can easily be the best hand if he's bluffing so I don't necessarily need to bluff him back. The turn is an offsuit 8, I check and call 2500, still hoping to make my hand but also thinking my ace may well be the best hand. The river is another 6, I check and he bets 3500. At this point he's representing basically nothing. It's so unlikely he has quads (he was already unlikely to have a 6 because he didn't slowplay, and now with 3 of them on the board and his small bets it's almost certain he doesn't), and he wouldn't play a 3 or 8 this way, he'd check at least one of the turn and river probably. So A-hi basically looks like the nuts to me here, pretty sure he has to be bluffing, so I call and he taps the table and says nice call. Then turns over his ATo. Damn.
Hand 3: So I'm down to around 7K, then get down to 4K. Still 75/150, CO, button and SB all limp. I check Q3o in the BB. Flop QT3 2 clubs. I lead 450 and the CO calls. Turn K, I bet 1K and he calls. River T, counterfeiting my hand. I check with 2850 left and he quickly put me all-in. I'm pretty frustrated, but then start thinking about what could he possibly have. I dont think he'd bet a king this big. If he was ahead on the turn he would have raised. How can he have a ten? JT maybe makes sense. So does busted clubs though. Eventually I stick it in, and he taps the table (he didn't accidentally have a better hand this time). Nice.
Hand 4: I win a race with KQ vs A8 aipf to get some chips, then pick up KK and AA and bust players on consecutive hands to get to 55K at 200/400 a50, around a twice average stack. Then I donk a bunch off though at 300/600 a50. It folds to the HJ who is pretty new table. As far as I can tell he just plays every pot. I can't recall a time in the 3 or so orbits he's been here that it folded to him and he didn't raise. He makes it 1700, and I find 66 in the CO and decide to just reraise to 5100 and take my chances since it seems like he's so ridiculously out of line. Instead he moves all-in for 20K more and I'm getting too good a price to fold against a guy who as far as I know could just be a psycho. He has JJ though and I lose half my pretty stack. I really hate playing for so many chips prelop with 66 I would never normally do this, but as far as I could tell he was raising practically any 2 cards.
From there less interesting stuff happened. I got into shortstack ninja mode and did my thang. Eventually with 30 left, 24 getting paid, Joe Sebok limped UTG at 800/1600 a200, CO limped, and the button raised to 8500. He was very aggressive so I figured he could easily be raising pretty light. I found 99 in the SB and shoved my 29K stack, and he called with J9s. Door card J, fun way to spend a day. Tomorrow is my last day here in Australia. There's a $1k event. I'll see how many players it gets, decent chance I'll play I suppose but I may just pass on it and make the most of my last day here instead. I did get around to going to watch some Australian Open tennis a few days ago which was really fun. We didn't get to see any big names, but watched some pretty competitive matches and I got a nice sun burn. OK bed time for me I guess. Later,
Mike
Hand 1: She limps and I check T3o in the BB. Flop J73 chk/chk. Turn Kc starting a possible flush draw. I check/call her bet. River K, I check, she bets and I figure enough draws and stuff missed that I should call and beat her 45.
Hand 2: She limps I check 96o. Flop 644, both check. Turn 5, I bet 3/4 pot she calls. River 2, I check and she bets some normal amount. I don't think she'd call the turn with just a 3, but probably would with a 7 which she'd be likely to bluff with here, so I call and win again.
I ran pretty good against Anna and made some hands at key times to win the match 2-0. In the third round I played timex though and he kicked my ass. I got behind in both, then won key races to get the lead, then lost really key races to lose. Fortunately we had traded a lot of % so I still got some money out of this tournament.
Today was the $2K 6-max which had a really great structure. I was doing really well for a while, and played some pretty interesting hands, unfortunately I busted 29th when 24 paid in the end though.
Hand 1: There's an aggressive player on my left who's 3-bet light already preflop against other players but not me. I can tell from the way he's played other hands though that he really knows what he's doing, he's not just some crazy spewtard. At 75/150 I open A6s UTG 5-handed to 450 with about 12K. I've been semi-active and as Im putting the chips for my raise in the pot I'm thinking this guy is going to 3-bet me soon, possibly this hand in fact. He quickly makes it 1350 and it folds back to me. It's a lot easier to trust your read and make a biggish move in a situation like this when you can predict his move, so I make it a goofy 3350 representing a monster but leaving room to fold to a push and he folds.
Hand 2: I've since 4-bet the same guy again, this time with AK, and had him fold again, and also been raising a ton of pots since I keep picking up pretty good hands and opening. It folds to me in the SB, I now have 15K and the BB covers, and I raise to 450 with A4ss. BB calls and we see a flop of 663 2 spades. I bet 600 and he makes it 1600. I don't really believe him because he's some middle aged guy and they would almost always slowplay trips here to trap the young overaggressive kid, but we're deep enough that I don't really want to pop him back since if he does happen to have a big hand I would pot-commit myself in a bad spot. Also my ace-hi can easily be the best hand if he's bluffing so I don't necessarily need to bluff him back. The turn is an offsuit 8, I check and call 2500, still hoping to make my hand but also thinking my ace may well be the best hand. The river is another 6, I check and he bets 3500. At this point he's representing basically nothing. It's so unlikely he has quads (he was already unlikely to have a 6 because he didn't slowplay, and now with 3 of them on the board and his small bets it's almost certain he doesn't), and he wouldn't play a 3 or 8 this way, he'd check at least one of the turn and river probably. So A-hi basically looks like the nuts to me here, pretty sure he has to be bluffing, so I call and he taps the table and says nice call. Then turns over his ATo. Damn.
Hand 3: So I'm down to around 7K, then get down to 4K. Still 75/150, CO, button and SB all limp. I check Q3o in the BB. Flop QT3 2 clubs. I lead 450 and the CO calls. Turn K, I bet 1K and he calls. River T, counterfeiting my hand. I check with 2850 left and he quickly put me all-in. I'm pretty frustrated, but then start thinking about what could he possibly have. I dont think he'd bet a king this big. If he was ahead on the turn he would have raised. How can he have a ten? JT maybe makes sense. So does busted clubs though. Eventually I stick it in, and he taps the table (he didn't accidentally have a better hand this time). Nice.
Hand 4: I win a race with KQ vs A8 aipf to get some chips, then pick up KK and AA and bust players on consecutive hands to get to 55K at 200/400 a50, around a twice average stack. Then I donk a bunch off though at 300/600 a50. It folds to the HJ who is pretty new table. As far as I can tell he just plays every pot. I can't recall a time in the 3 or so orbits he's been here that it folded to him and he didn't raise. He makes it 1700, and I find 66 in the CO and decide to just reraise to 5100 and take my chances since it seems like he's so ridiculously out of line. Instead he moves all-in for 20K more and I'm getting too good a price to fold against a guy who as far as I know could just be a psycho. He has JJ though and I lose half my pretty stack. I really hate playing for so many chips prelop with 66 I would never normally do this, but as far as I could tell he was raising practically any 2 cards.
From there less interesting stuff happened. I got into shortstack ninja mode and did my thang. Eventually with 30 left, 24 getting paid, Joe Sebok limped UTG at 800/1600 a200, CO limped, and the button raised to 8500. He was very aggressive so I figured he could easily be raising pretty light. I found 99 in the SB and shoved my 29K stack, and he called with J9s. Door card J, fun way to spend a day. Tomorrow is my last day here in Australia. There's a $1k event. I'll see how many players it gets, decent chance I'll play I suppose but I may just pass on it and make the most of my last day here instead. I did get around to going to watch some Australian Open tennis a few days ago which was really fun. We didn't get to see any big names, but watched some pretty competitive matches and I got a nice sun burn. OK bed time for me I guess. Later,
Mike
Monday, January 14, 2008
Sigh...
Yet another early bustout for me in a major tournament. Considering how conservative I tend to play this is getting kind of ridiculous. My table draw wasn't especially good even though there was only one good player and he busted very early (Brandon Adams). I had terrible relative position though, the two maniacs were on my left and three nits on my right. After the maniacs was an aggressive young Norwegian player so I was basically forced to play pretty ABC poker. Anyways I won and lost some small pots for the first 2 levels. Got up to 22K but then started bleeding off some chips when the maniacs on my left reraised me a few times or I missed flops and either gave up or fired once and then gave up.
I was down to about 15K in level 3, 100/200 a25, when I found QQ in the hijack and made it 600. The Norwegian kid made it 2000 from the SB. I considered my options and decided to just shove to make my hand look like AK or a frustrated bluff since he'd reraised me a few times before. He called after a short think with JJ and I was looking good for a double up until a jack turned. Anyways, there are some more events here later in the week and I do really like this city so things could be worse. I think the Australian Open tennis has started too so I definitely want to go check that out at some point.
Mike
Edit: I'm on the TV in Canada on The Score right now apparently, World Cup of Poker from Barcelona is on.
I was down to about 15K in level 3, 100/200 a25, when I found QQ in the hijack and made it 600. The Norwegian kid made it 2000 from the SB. I considered my options and decided to just shove to make my hand look like AK or a frustrated bluff since he'd reraised me a few times before. He called after a short think with JJ and I was looking good for a double up until a jack turned. Anyways, there are some more events here later in the week and I do really like this city so things could be worse. I think the Australian Open tennis has started too so I definitely want to go check that out at some point.
Mike
Edit: I'm on the TV in Canada on The Score right now apparently, World Cup of Poker from Barcelona is on.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Day 1A I guess?
Yoooooooooooo. So I was playing some drunk kickball with the rest of the poker nerds today. Team Goggles kicked some ass imo. After that great victory all hands headed to the Belgian beer garden to continue the good times. I don't think I should have to explain why drinking Belgian beer surrounded by gorgoeus landscape and Australian women with all my homies was one of the best times ever, but in case it's not obvious I loved that place. Then we went for a great meal at the Meat and Wine Co. After that we went to a bar where a seemingly low key night took a turn for the potentially epic when Mark Vos showed up. Several shots later we were headed to the infamous Spearmint Rhino, but they wouldn't let us some of us in due to our kickball attire. Despite our best efforts to bribe the bouncers several of us could not get in. The bouncers were being dicks, so I finally just told them to **** themselves and walked back to Crown by myself. Pokerstars had already bought me into the main event so I stopped by the poker room just to register, planning to play day 1B because I'm kind of drunk right now. As it turns out I was signed up for Day 1A by default at the feature table. I'm not sure if that means TV coverage or not, but I know the table is next to the rail at least so friends here can sweat me. I could have changed my Day 1 but that seemed worth keeping I guess. So I'm going to bed now so I can be ready to ship it crucial tomorrow. I suspect Day 1A will be the softest day 1 so I don't mind playing tomorrow anyways. Table 31, seat 7. Holla back,
Mike
Mike
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
$1K rebuy tournament report
I promised a tourney report and today had some interesting hands so it should make a decent one.
Rebuy period: I usually clown around a bit in live rebuy tournaments in the rebuy period. I kept my 4 $1K chips to rebuy with on the table, and then try to make a few "crazy" image plays. Most people in these tournaments aren't planning to really rebuy at all, maybe if they bust or something, so you can get away with a lot knowing you can always rebuy if something backfires. One of my favourites is to shove from the binds when a bunch of players limp with any two cards since they basically never have a hand to call. Then you show your rags and start setting up an image. So I did that a few times today which was ok. The best hand was when I limped 44 UTG and announced I was setting the trap. Mark Goodman raised my limp and he was the only guy who seemed to not be averse to gambling a little. The BB called his raise and he has nothing approximately always. I now sprung the trap and moved in, Goodman called with KTo and I won the race. From there people didn't fold when I bet, but I never had a hand so I lost the chips I had won. Double add-on and on to the real poker, I'm in for the "minimum", $4K.
Hand 1: I had won a small flip with 99 vs AJ but then lost some back as my bets still weren't getting much respect and I wasn't making pairs. with around 6600 I raise UTG with T9dd to 300 at 50/100. Probably a somewhat questionable raise but whatever. A late position player calls and the BB who is pretty bad calls. Flop TT5, I bet 650 and the BB calls. Turn 5, I bet 1250 hoping to induce a bluff shove and the BB calls. River 7, he checks again, I bet 2750, he moves me in for 1700 more, I obviously call and he has 66 for some reason.
Hand 2: I went on a bit of a rush from here but I can't really remember all the hands. I know i busted Mark Goodman when he called my position raise and checkraised all-in with a flush draw on the flop. He was short though so I had an easy call with top pair which held. I'm now up to about 22K.
Hand 3: I have a semi-active image but have mostly shown down good hands lately and I've never reraised anyone. It folds to a young Aussie guy in MP who raised to 600 at 100/200 a25. He's been pretty active and seems to know what he's doing, and he also has a pretty decent sized stack. I decide to make it 1850 in the CO with Q9o, but he calls. Not sure what he has here, could be trapping with a big hand, could have small pair or suited connector hoping to flop big and bust me, or maybe some random big cards he doesn't want to fold if he's worse than I think he is. Flop A87, he checks and I have to bet this flop as it he shouldn't usually like the ace. I bet 2750, he hums and haws about how unlucky it he is that an ace flopped and calls. The turn is an A, I obviously don't put any more money in. It checks down, and a key point in Australia is that the last aggressor always has to show their hand first. So I roll my Q9o so I can see his hand, and he the AA for quads. Anyways now my image obviously sucks, which is important for this hand.
Hand 4: A young German player Daniel Zink makes it 550 in EP. I still have around 16K and he covers me, and I find T9dd in the SB. I figure with my new bad table image I should get some action if I flop big and call. The flop comes 875 two diamonds, and I lead 1150, intending to reraise all-in if he raises my bet. He just calls though and the tuen is the 8d completing my flush b ut pairing the board. I bet 2675 and he calls. The river is a 5. I really think he has a big pair that he's playing pot control with, and given my new bad image I just might get a river bet paid off. It seems very unlikely he has a fullhouse given he didn't raise the flop, and a bigger flush is only a little worrisome. I make a fairly big bet of 6425, and he thinks for a bit and moves me in for 4250 more. I think I thought for 3 minutes or so, though most of my energy was probably dedicated to being angry and hating my life more than figuring out what to do. I really didn't see how it made sense for him to have a big hand here unless he slowplayed a monster on the flop, which on such a draw heavy board should be less likely. Anyways eventually I just talked some sense into myself and realized that he probably played his hand poorly on some street, but it's impossible for him to be bluffing and this is an easy fold. So I folded angrily.
Hand 5: Steveol7 raises to 800 at 150/300 a 25 on my right. I move in with 66, the button shoves over the top and I outflip his AK to get back to 10Kish. OK maybe I have a chance again.
Hand 6: From here not much happened. I blinded down a bit, I tried to raise the blinds twice butgot reraised both times despite they were the only two times I put chips in the pot during the 200/400 level. I got into pushbot mode to stay afloat. Eventually I got moved tables with 7500 at 300/600 a75. A player who Bond had told me is rkruok from online shoved his very short stack on my BB. I found AQ and instacalled but lost to his T6o. I then beat JJ with KT0 the next hand though to get right back where I was. My bustout hand was when I shoved 66 in EP with around 7K at 300/600 a75. The BB called with 88 and that was that.
Tomorrow is a $1500 bounty tournament that has a kind of weird structure I need to check out. In other news, the Full Tilt plane from LAX got in today with all the Full Tilt pros and people who won seats to the main event on their site, as well as some others who hitched a ride, so pretty much everyone is here now. I crashed the Full Tilt party for a bit tonight with Leo and a couple others which was alright. I also had kangaroo for dinner tonight, and it was actually pretty good. Still haven't headbutted or boxed any kangaroos yet though. They're avoiding me imo.
Mike
Rebuy period: I usually clown around a bit in live rebuy tournaments in the rebuy period. I kept my 4 $1K chips to rebuy with on the table, and then try to make a few "crazy" image plays. Most people in these tournaments aren't planning to really rebuy at all, maybe if they bust or something, so you can get away with a lot knowing you can always rebuy if something backfires. One of my favourites is to shove from the binds when a bunch of players limp with any two cards since they basically never have a hand to call. Then you show your rags and start setting up an image. So I did that a few times today which was ok. The best hand was when I limped 44 UTG and announced I was setting the trap. Mark Goodman raised my limp and he was the only guy who seemed to not be averse to gambling a little. The BB called his raise and he has nothing approximately always. I now sprung the trap and moved in, Goodman called with KTo and I won the race. From there people didn't fold when I bet, but I never had a hand so I lost the chips I had won. Double add-on and on to the real poker, I'm in for the "minimum", $4K.
Hand 1: I had won a small flip with 99 vs AJ but then lost some back as my bets still weren't getting much respect and I wasn't making pairs. with around 6600 I raise UTG with T9dd to 300 at 50/100. Probably a somewhat questionable raise but whatever. A late position player calls and the BB who is pretty bad calls. Flop TT5, I bet 650 and the BB calls. Turn 5, I bet 1250 hoping to induce a bluff shove and the BB calls. River 7, he checks again, I bet 2750, he moves me in for 1700 more, I obviously call and he has 66 for some reason.
Hand 2: I went on a bit of a rush from here but I can't really remember all the hands. I know i busted Mark Goodman when he called my position raise and checkraised all-in with a flush draw on the flop. He was short though so I had an easy call with top pair which held. I'm now up to about 22K.
Hand 3: I have a semi-active image but have mostly shown down good hands lately and I've never reraised anyone. It folds to a young Aussie guy in MP who raised to 600 at 100/200 a25. He's been pretty active and seems to know what he's doing, and he also has a pretty decent sized stack. I decide to make it 1850 in the CO with Q9o, but he calls. Not sure what he has here, could be trapping with a big hand, could have small pair or suited connector hoping to flop big and bust me, or maybe some random big cards he doesn't want to fold if he's worse than I think he is. Flop A87, he checks and I have to bet this flop as it he shouldn't usually like the ace. I bet 2750, he hums and haws about how unlucky it he is that an ace flopped and calls. The turn is an A, I obviously don't put any more money in. It checks down, and a key point in Australia is that the last aggressor always has to show their hand first. So I roll my Q9o so I can see his hand, and he the AA for quads. Anyways now my image obviously sucks, which is important for this hand.
Hand 4: A young German player Daniel Zink makes it 550 in EP. I still have around 16K and he covers me, and I find T9dd in the SB. I figure with my new bad table image I should get some action if I flop big and call. The flop comes 875 two diamonds, and I lead 1150, intending to reraise all-in if he raises my bet. He just calls though and the tuen is the 8d completing my flush b ut pairing the board. I bet 2675 and he calls. The river is a 5. I really think he has a big pair that he's playing pot control with, and given my new bad image I just might get a river bet paid off. It seems very unlikely he has a fullhouse given he didn't raise the flop, and a bigger flush is only a little worrisome. I make a fairly big bet of 6425, and he thinks for a bit and moves me in for 4250 more. I think I thought for 3 minutes or so, though most of my energy was probably dedicated to being angry and hating my life more than figuring out what to do. I really didn't see how it made sense for him to have a big hand here unless he slowplayed a monster on the flop, which on such a draw heavy board should be less likely. Anyways eventually I just talked some sense into myself and realized that he probably played his hand poorly on some street, but it's impossible for him to be bluffing and this is an easy fold. So I folded angrily.
Hand 5: Steveol7 raises to 800 at 150/300 a 25 on my right. I move in with 66, the button shoves over the top and I outflip his AK to get back to 10Kish. OK maybe I have a chance again.
Hand 6: From here not much happened. I blinded down a bit, I tried to raise the blinds twice butgot reraised both times despite they were the only two times I put chips in the pot during the 200/400 level. I got into pushbot mode to stay afloat. Eventually I got moved tables with 7500 at 300/600 a75. A player who Bond had told me is rkruok from online shoved his very short stack on my BB. I found AQ and instacalled but lost to his T6o. I then beat JJ with KT0 the next hand though to get right back where I was. My bustout hand was when I shoved 66 in EP with around 7K at 300/600 a75. The BB called with 88 and that was that.
Tomorrow is a $1500 bounty tournament that has a kind of weird structure I need to check out. In other news, the Full Tilt plane from LAX got in today with all the Full Tilt pros and people who won seats to the main event on their site, as well as some others who hitched a ride, so pretty much everyone is here now. I crashed the Full Tilt party for a bit tonight with Leo and a couple others which was alright. I also had kangaroo for dinner tonight, and it was actually pretty good. Still haven't headbutted or boxed any kangaroos yet though. They're avoiding me imo.
Mike
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
Aussie Update
Hey, we're 4 events into the Aussie Millions now and I'm still having a blast. I haven't had too much success myself so far, but friends have already put up some good finishes. timex got 2nd in the opening $1K NL event after chopping for $90K. For some reason he thought it was a good idea to trade 10% with me for the entire series so that has me in good shape thus far. Also, Jimmy "gobboboy" Fricke won Event 3, the mixed stud tournament, for $17K. gobbo finished 2nd in the main event here last year for $1 million AUD, so he was definitely very pleased to come back and win an event this year. I had my first cash in the $1K limit holdem event today. I was min-betting along pretty well, but then I got caught making a move on the bubble which cut into my stack. After that I went card dead, and finally made a stand with ATo in my BB. Unfortunately I ran into the CO raiser's 93s, and that was that. I finished 15th for $1230. So once the $1100 buy-in is accounted for and the $123 I owe timex for our 10% swap, I finished ahead $7 on the day. Then I drank a $9 Crown Lager from the mini-bar in our hotel room. Sigh.
Outside of poker Melbourne has been a lot of fun. I've been hanging out with all the other online players that are already here a lot. We usually just end up going for dinner, having some drinks, and then end up back at Tony's place for Wii, chinese poker, more drinks, etc.... Tomorrow is the $1K rebuy, which should be a great tournament. It's the biggest effective buy-in preliminary event that I plan to play. Playing rebuy tournaments live is always a lot of fun because you get to do crazy stuff and laugh at the silly live nits who don't even rebuy off the start. Also, I'm 2/2 lifetime in cashing $1K rebuys, so I have a record to maintain. I haven't really given any tournament reports yet, but I'll get around to doing more of those at some point. The last thing anyone wants is to listen to me try to give limit holdem strategy, considering I was a losing 5/10 player on Party before I switched to mostly tournaments. It doesn't really matter though, because everywhere you go people are just awful at limit holdem. Keep in mind that limit holdem was the main game played in most casinos before the poker boom, so you'd think at least some of the old time players might be decent. Again, you would be wrong. Almost everyone has so many glaring fundamental leaks that it's ridiculous. Anyways, going to get some rest and hopefully put in a good showing in the rebuy tomorrow. Peace,
Mike
Outside of poker Melbourne has been a lot of fun. I've been hanging out with all the other online players that are already here a lot. We usually just end up going for dinner, having some drinks, and then end up back at Tony's place for Wii, chinese poker, more drinks, etc.... Tomorrow is the $1K rebuy, which should be a great tournament. It's the biggest effective buy-in preliminary event that I plan to play. Playing rebuy tournaments live is always a lot of fun because you get to do crazy stuff and laugh at the silly live nits who don't even rebuy off the start. Also, I'm 2/2 lifetime in cashing $1K rebuys, so I have a record to maintain. I haven't really given any tournament reports yet, but I'll get around to doing more of those at some point. The last thing anyone wants is to listen to me try to give limit holdem strategy, considering I was a losing 5/10 player on Party before I switched to mostly tournaments. It doesn't really matter though, because everywhere you go people are just awful at limit holdem. Keep in mind that limit holdem was the main game played in most casinos before the poker boom, so you'd think at least some of the old time players might be decent. Again, you would be wrong. Almost everyone has so many glaring fundamental leaks that it's ridiculous. Anyways, going to get some rest and hopefully put in a good showing in the rebuy tomorrow. Peace,
Mike
Saturday, January 05, 2008
G'day from Melbourne
So I've arrived in Melbourne for the Aussie Millions. Today was the first event, a $1K NL event with 537 players. I just busted out after losing a flip, but I'll talk about that in a bit. The trip down here took much longer than any other I've been on. I believe it was around 22 hours in the air and close to 30 hours total. Despite not feeling well for most of the trip I managed to sleep a bit and arrive in relatively good shape. However, in the future I won't be booking any 14 hour flights with United, they just don't offer very much in terms of TV/movies and I can't sleep 14 hours straight on a plane. My bags arrived with no problems, however I was still missing a lot of stuff because Air Canada had lost my bag on my flight from St. John's to Toronto earlier in the week, and failed to deliver it before I left for Australia. So while I did have all my shorts and sandals that don't play so well in the several feet of snow in Newfoundland, I was rather low on some essentials such as socks and underwear. This meant the first order of business once getting checked into the hotel and cleaned up a bit would have to be Australian shopping spree.
Timex's bags did not arrive in Melbourne unfortunately, so after a brief delay for that we got a cab to Crowne Plaza Hotel where we are staying for the duration of the trip. Unfortunately the Crown Casino was sold out when I got around to booking, but the Plaza is still a very nice hotel just across the street, and our room is quite acceptable, though I'm told the rooms over at the Crown are incredible. As luck would have it, I was able to get a hold of Tony aka Bond18, another online player/friend/TwoRags blogger who lives in Melbourne now, and he and his girlfriend Celina were already planning to do some shopping that afternoon. A quick cab ride later and I met up with them. We ran around Melbourne all afternoon/evening for various errands such as food, shopping, and Crown Lager. I bought a bunch of clothes, though I may actually need more before the end of the trip. Between the travel, heat, beer, and my stomach not feeling so well, I was exhausted by 8:00, when we met some other poker players for more asian food. The following story is completely irrelevant, but was so bizarre I feel have to share it.
I decide to just order a coke since I've got no appetite, and they give me a glass with some ice to pour it in. As I said I'm completely exhausted and basically just trying to make it through the meal so I can get a ride back to the hotel. So I pour the coke into the glass, and as I'm putting the can down I hear the sound of ice and coke spilling out all over the table and feel coke dripping down onto my shorts. As exhausted as I am it takes a moment for me to process what is happening, and I am particularly confused because I am fairly certain I did not knock over the glass, nor can I remember hearing the sound of it smashing against the table. Finally I react to stand up and move out of the way of the spill, and as I do I notice that the glass has split right in half directly down the middle. As far as I can tell this seems like something that should basically be physically impossible, but all I can really muster as a reaction is to stare with a blank look of bewilderment on my face and point at it. In the end everyone has a good laugh, at my reaction as much as what happened, and I got another Coke and glass which did not explode.
After dinner I got dropped back at the hotel. My final errand of the day went smoothly fortunately. Instead of wiring money down, I was able to arrange to trade online money for Australian cash here with an Australian pro named Gary Benson at a reasonable rate. He has a cashout service for Aussie players on Pokerstars, but during tournaments here he also trades cash for online $$ for foreign players coming into town. I must say it's sure is a lot more convenient than dealing with a bank. Just send the transfer online, meet him down in the poker room to pick up the cash, and you're already over there to register for the tournament the next day. No annoying paper work and waiting periods like with banks. Anyways so far I love Melbourne. The people seem friendly, the accent is pretty cool, the women are gorgeous, the weather is beautiful, and what I've seen of the city so far is great, though I think I've mostly been in the nicer parts. What an awesome place to come lose $30K.
Oh yeah tournament report. I got my money in as a 2:1 dog twice and won, then got in as a coinflip twice and lost. I also made one rather awful fold preflop which I'm kinda pissed with myself about, but whatever. So I guess I'm not going to get around to that tournament report after all. If that's all you were looking for and I tricked you into reading all this then good, at least someone got through all my ramblings.
Mike
Timex's bags did not arrive in Melbourne unfortunately, so after a brief delay for that we got a cab to Crowne Plaza Hotel where we are staying for the duration of the trip. Unfortunately the Crown Casino was sold out when I got around to booking, but the Plaza is still a very nice hotel just across the street, and our room is quite acceptable, though I'm told the rooms over at the Crown are incredible. As luck would have it, I was able to get a hold of Tony aka Bond18, another online player/friend/TwoRags blogger who lives in Melbourne now, and he and his girlfriend Celina were already planning to do some shopping that afternoon. A quick cab ride later and I met up with them. We ran around Melbourne all afternoon/evening for various errands such as food, shopping, and Crown Lager. I bought a bunch of clothes, though I may actually need more before the end of the trip. Between the travel, heat, beer, and my stomach not feeling so well, I was exhausted by 8:00, when we met some other poker players for more asian food. The following story is completely irrelevant, but was so bizarre I feel have to share it.
I decide to just order a coke since I've got no appetite, and they give me a glass with some ice to pour it in. As I said I'm completely exhausted and basically just trying to make it through the meal so I can get a ride back to the hotel. So I pour the coke into the glass, and as I'm putting the can down I hear the sound of ice and coke spilling out all over the table and feel coke dripping down onto my shorts. As exhausted as I am it takes a moment for me to process what is happening, and I am particularly confused because I am fairly certain I did not knock over the glass, nor can I remember hearing the sound of it smashing against the table. Finally I react to stand up and move out of the way of the spill, and as I do I notice that the glass has split right in half directly down the middle. As far as I can tell this seems like something that should basically be physically impossible, but all I can really muster as a reaction is to stare with a blank look of bewilderment on my face and point at it. In the end everyone has a good laugh, at my reaction as much as what happened, and I got another Coke and glass which did not explode.
After dinner I got dropped back at the hotel. My final errand of the day went smoothly fortunately. Instead of wiring money down, I was able to arrange to trade online money for Australian cash here with an Australian pro named Gary Benson at a reasonable rate. He has a cashout service for Aussie players on Pokerstars, but during tournaments here he also trades cash for online $$ for foreign players coming into town. I must say it's sure is a lot more convenient than dealing with a bank. Just send the transfer online, meet him down in the poker room to pick up the cash, and you're already over there to register for the tournament the next day. No annoying paper work and waiting periods like with banks. Anyways so far I love Melbourne. The people seem friendly, the accent is pretty cool, the women are gorgeous, the weather is beautiful, and what I've seen of the city so far is great, though I think I've mostly been in the nicer parts. What an awesome place to come lose $30K.
Oh yeah tournament report. I got my money in as a 2:1 dog twice and won, then got in as a coinflip twice and lost. I also made one rather awful fold preflop which I'm kinda pissed with myself about, but whatever. So I guess I'm not going to get around to that tournament report after all. If that's all you were looking for and I tricked you into reading all this then good, at least someone got through all my ramblings.
Mike
Monday, December 31, 2007
Quick 2007 Year in Review
I kind of don't feel like writing a big long year in review, so I'm going to do the cliffs notes version instead. I started the year with basically a $50K roll online not counting the money I won live over WSOP that I didn't want to touch, and a PCA seat. In 2006 I had pretty decent success at the bigger tournaments online and had started learning 3/6 and 5/10 NL cash games online with a lot of initial success. Enter 2007, here's a post I made from 2+2 in an end of year reflection thread with some grammar fixed and extra details added:
Man what a sick year I had.... I started the year playing most of the big online tournaments and having a lot of success learning cash games playing 3/6 and 5/10 NL on like a 50K roll. I continued to do well in those games and also started shortstacking 25/50 and killing it. I was running good and winning pretty big, and I also had a few 20-25K tournament scores. Then I began taking shots with timex shortstacking nosebleed cash games on Full Tilt. Initially we just crushed the games, but we eventually went on a big downswing and quit as the players were adjusting, but still finished up pretty huge overall. During this time I had also moved up to fullstacking 10/20 and 25/50 cash games when they were good and continued to run really hot. Next, the World Series came and I didn't do anything great despite having a bunch of cashes, but I won Super Tuesday online for $75K while I was there.
When I got home from WSOP I decided I just couldn't deal with grad school anymore and there was no way I could finish. I dropped out and grinded 25/50 on Cake back before all the 2+2ers invaded when the games were really soft. I immediately put in a +$200K month, and decided this going pro thing was pretty ok. Since then I've basically just been losing a lot, but I'm still so far ahead of where I ever thought I'd be on the year that it's hard to be too upset. My goals for 2008 include breaking out of 0/17 slump in 5K+ buy-in events, first 6-figure tournament score, win anything on a Sunday, get back to putting in more cash hands, and the usual trying to live a bit more healthily. Monetary goals are kind of foolish since all you can really control is how well you play and the variance is pretty big (especially playing so many big buy-in live events). Also, you never how good the online games will stay as time progresses, but that being said, I'd like to make a million this year.
Mike
Man what a sick year I had.... I started the year playing most of the big online tournaments and having a lot of success learning cash games playing 3/6 and 5/10 NL on like a 50K roll. I continued to do well in those games and also started shortstacking 25/50 and killing it. I was running good and winning pretty big, and I also had a few 20-25K tournament scores. Then I began taking shots with timex shortstacking nosebleed cash games on Full Tilt. Initially we just crushed the games, but we eventually went on a big downswing and quit as the players were adjusting, but still finished up pretty huge overall. During this time I had also moved up to fullstacking 10/20 and 25/50 cash games when they were good and continued to run really hot. Next, the World Series came and I didn't do anything great despite having a bunch of cashes, but I won Super Tuesday online for $75K while I was there.
When I got home from WSOP I decided I just couldn't deal with grad school anymore and there was no way I could finish. I dropped out and grinded 25/50 on Cake back before all the 2+2ers invaded when the games were really soft. I immediately put in a +$200K month, and decided this going pro thing was pretty ok. Since then I've basically just been losing a lot, but I'm still so far ahead of where I ever thought I'd be on the year that it's hard to be too upset. My goals for 2008 include breaking out of 0/17 slump in 5K+ buy-in events, first 6-figure tournament score, win anything on a Sunday, get back to putting in more cash hands, and the usual trying to live a bit more healthily. Monetary goals are kind of foolish since all you can really control is how well you play and the variance is pretty big (especially playing so many big buy-in live events). Also, you never how good the online games will stay as time progresses, but that being said, I'd like to make a million this year.
Mike
Monday, December 17, 2007
Sunday: $100K bubbles and Aussie sats
This week's Sunday heartbreak comes from a new source! Pokerstars added a $5K 20-player winner-take-all tournament which I decided to give a shot. I'm an idiot and haven't fixed my laptop so I couldn't play Party Poker, and I couldn't deposit money onto some of the European sites I've started playing on either since I was in the US. That left a lot of open screen space early in the day when I'd usually play Eurodonkaments so this seemed to fit in the schedule pretty well. The field didn't look too bad, it was definitely pretty tough but there were some soft spots and most of the real top tier players weren't in it. I got off to a very slow start but as we closed in on the final 10 players I started making some hands and picking up a lot of chips. I won a couple huge pots against JCarver (taknapotin) when I flopped big hands. In the first he mistimed a big bluff and in the 2nd he ended up folding the river after putting in a fair number of chips against my flopped set.
Things were going well as we got to 4-handed play but I lost a key pot where I slowplayed QQ preflop just calling a reraise from TheCleaner, who would prove to be my nemesis. An A flopped, and when he checked the flop to me I knew I was in trouble. He bet the turn blank pretty strong and although I had expected him to bluff the flop with most hands I beat, I didn't really know his game that well and I decided folding such a strong hand for one barrel was too weak, and called. He decided to check the river so I got to see his AT. This hand really killed my momentum and I was shortstacked shortly thereafter as he was really attacking my blinds hard and I couldn't find much to defend with. I got lucky to suck out on the river with my KJ vs his KQ and then finally got action on a couple of my bigger hands against the other player (Rickiee I think?), winning AT vs A8 and AK vs A2 all-in preflop. I was still way behind heads up though and never got much going. I got as close as 35K to 65K but he played very well and I was probably a little unlucky also to not get much action when I had a hand. He ground me down and I ended up resorting to some really risky bluffs to try to hold my ground. In the end I moved in on one of his raises with KTs even though I felt he had switched gears and was not planning to fold to my push. I figured I wasn't in too bad shape against his range and I was so far behind and nothing was working that I'd rather just gamble to try to get some chips (of course my read could always be wrong also). He called with AQ and I outflopped him but he rivered an A for the win. Tough guy to run into HU, I'm told he's a very good Dutch midstakes HU cash player and he got the best of me. Anyways the exciting part of for me and all of you I guess is that the final table of this tournament will be replayed with hole cards of all players exposed, presumably some time during this week. So keep an eye out for that and we'll find out how badly I got owned or if he was just running good.
I had a few deep runs in some of the Sunday majors but no major cashes. I did however finally win a seat to the Aussie Millions main event. I've been playing the satellites on Full Tilt and Cake every Sunday for this and Stars finally started running some this week as well. I still run pretty ok in major satellites on Stars apparently as I won the seat on my first try. The play was really incredibly bad, it was kind of shocking. I'm used to playing against weak players who have won seats into these bigger buy-in satellites through small stakes subsatellites, but a lot of these guys were just on a whole different level of bad. Open shoving 10 times the pot with Q9o preflop in MP fairly late in the tournament bad (I obviously luckboxed into picking up KK to take the donation). So this saved my day more or less. Anyways I'm stranded in the airport for now, my flight is super late because of all the snow in Toronto. I thought it was only 5 hours late but it's actually going to be at least 7. Vegas was a lot of fun as always, but I think Australia is going to be even better.
Mike
Things were going well as we got to 4-handed play but I lost a key pot where I slowplayed QQ preflop just calling a reraise from TheCleaner, who would prove to be my nemesis. An A flopped, and when he checked the flop to me I knew I was in trouble. He bet the turn blank pretty strong and although I had expected him to bluff the flop with most hands I beat, I didn't really know his game that well and I decided folding such a strong hand for one barrel was too weak, and called. He decided to check the river so I got to see his AT. This hand really killed my momentum and I was shortstacked shortly thereafter as he was really attacking my blinds hard and I couldn't find much to defend with. I got lucky to suck out on the river with my KJ vs his KQ and then finally got action on a couple of my bigger hands against the other player (Rickiee I think?), winning AT vs A8 and AK vs A2 all-in preflop. I was still way behind heads up though and never got much going. I got as close as 35K to 65K but he played very well and I was probably a little unlucky also to not get much action when I had a hand. He ground me down and I ended up resorting to some really risky bluffs to try to hold my ground. In the end I moved in on one of his raises with KTs even though I felt he had switched gears and was not planning to fold to my push. I figured I wasn't in too bad shape against his range and I was so far behind and nothing was working that I'd rather just gamble to try to get some chips (of course my read could always be wrong also). He called with AQ and I outflopped him but he rivered an A for the win. Tough guy to run into HU, I'm told he's a very good Dutch midstakes HU cash player and he got the best of me. Anyways the exciting part of for me and all of you I guess is that the final table of this tournament will be replayed with hole cards of all players exposed, presumably some time during this week. So keep an eye out for that and we'll find out how badly I got owned or if he was just running good.
I had a few deep runs in some of the Sunday majors but no major cashes. I did however finally win a seat to the Aussie Millions main event. I've been playing the satellites on Full Tilt and Cake every Sunday for this and Stars finally started running some this week as well. I still run pretty ok in major satellites on Stars apparently as I won the seat on my first try. The play was really incredibly bad, it was kind of shocking. I'm used to playing against weak players who have won seats into these bigger buy-in satellites through small stakes subsatellites, but a lot of these guys were just on a whole different level of bad. Open shoving 10 times the pot with Q9o preflop in MP fairly late in the tournament bad (I obviously luckboxed into picking up KK to take the donation). So this saved my day more or less. Anyways I'm stranded in the airport for now, my flight is super late because of all the snow in Toronto. I thought it was only 5 hours late but it's actually going to be at least 7. Vegas was a lot of fun as always, but I think Australia is going to be even better.
Mike
Friday, December 14, 2007
Busto
Spent more time on the colour up to start the day than I actually played in the tournament. I folded a bit, moved in once, and was down to 7700 when the CO open shoved for 10K (still 400/800 a100). I called with AQo OTB and then the BB overcalled. CO had KQo, BB 99 and the nines held. Oh well I'm Vegas for the weekend, could be worse. I'll probably party a bit and play online. Home for Christmas soon!
Mike
Mike
12.3K for Day 2
Today was up and down, but overall pretty poor. I don't feel like running through all the hands again right now. My level by level chip count went 30K--->22K--->11K--->22K--->20K--->12K. I got dealt a ton of premium pairs but either got them beat or won small pots with them mostly, and I think every time I put chips in the pot preflop once the antes kicked in without a premium hand it got reraised behind me, it was really frustrating. I likely made several smallish mistakes throughout the day but avoided any outright blunders, so at least I still have some chips.
Mike
Mike
Thursday, December 13, 2007
"No, we're brother and sister"
I haven't played at all the last 3 days, my sister came down to visit me when she finished up with school for the term so I've just been hanging out with her. We saw a few shows, Wayne Brady on Monday night and KA by Cirque du Soleil on Tuesday. Wayne Brady was pretty good, if you're a fan of his you'd obviously like it, he did a lot of the usual stuff though, I wasn't overly impressed but it was fun. KA was great, the only other Cirque show I'd seen before was Love, the Beatles one, and I liked this one a lot more, I'm going to have to make sure to see the others when I get a chance. We also had some nice meals. Social House, the Japanese/sushi place at Treasure Island was the best meal we had by far. Unfortunately she left this evening so it's back to work for me with the $15K main event. I play Day 1B tomorrow.
In previous events I played the $5K tournament on Saturday. I grinded for 11 hours, never really getting much going. I peaked at around 22K chips (10K starting) when I sucked out on Roy Winston when I moved in on his blind with 87o and he found AKs. I couldn't do much with those chips and eventually had to push A8s which got called by TT and lost. I can't remember much from the $3K anymore other than a few key hands:
Hand 1: 200/400 a25. EP big stack limps, I complete T8dd in the SB and the BB checks. Flop Q82 one diamond, checks to limper who bets 1000. I call and the turn is the 3d. I check, he bets 2500, and I move in for 8200 total. He quickly calls with AQ but I river a diamond.
Hand 2: I somehow have around 35K now. I open in EP to 2200 at 400/800 a75 with QQ. The SB with about the same calls and we see a J64 2 club flop. He checks, I bet 4K and he raises to 10K. I don't know anything about the guy, and I can't really see folding this hand so I call and let him fire the turn if he's bluffing. Turn bricks and he shoves, I call and he says "nice call" and tables the AJo. What, you really thought you were bluffing? Looks more like he has no idea what he's trying to do but he had top top so he had to wager all his chips. I dunno people play bad. Now I have a really big stack, and I managed to build it as high as 85K winning small pots/
Hand 3: Unfortunately from there things didn't go well. I went a little card dead and was down around 60K when we got in the money. Now at 1500/3000 a500 it folds to the SB who is a tight guy and he makes it a suspicious 7500. I find AQs though so whatever, I make it a third of my stack or something and he instashoves so I call and lose to his KK. TRICKY RAISE SIZE SIR YOU GOT ME.
I'll probably call in some voice updates on TwoRags tomorrow during the breaks if people want to follow my progress live. Assuming I make it out of level 1 for a change that is.
Mike
In previous events I played the $5K tournament on Saturday. I grinded for 11 hours, never really getting much going. I peaked at around 22K chips (10K starting) when I sucked out on Roy Winston when I moved in on his blind with 87o and he found AKs. I couldn't do much with those chips and eventually had to push A8s which got called by TT and lost. I can't remember much from the $3K anymore other than a few key hands:
Hand 1: 200/400 a25. EP big stack limps, I complete T8dd in the SB and the BB checks. Flop Q82 one diamond, checks to limper who bets 1000. I call and the turn is the 3d. I check, he bets 2500, and I move in for 8200 total. He quickly calls with AQ but I river a diamond.
Hand 2: I somehow have around 35K now. I open in EP to 2200 at 400/800 a75 with QQ. The SB with about the same calls and we see a J64 2 club flop. He checks, I bet 4K and he raises to 10K. I don't know anything about the guy, and I can't really see folding this hand so I call and let him fire the turn if he's bluffing. Turn bricks and he shoves, I call and he says "nice call" and tables the AJo. What, you really thought you were bluffing? Looks more like he has no idea what he's trying to do but he had top top so he had to wager all his chips. I dunno people play bad. Now I have a really big stack, and I managed to build it as high as 85K winning small pots/
Hand 3: Unfortunately from there things didn't go well. I went a little card dead and was down around 60K when we got in the money. Now at 1500/3000 a500 it folds to the SB who is a tight guy and he makes it a suspicious 7500. I find AQs though so whatever, I make it a third of my stack or something and he instashoves so I call and lose to his KK. TRICKY RAISE SIZE SIR YOU GOT ME.
I'll probably call in some voice updates on TwoRags tomorrow during the breaks if people want to follow my progress live. Assuming I make it out of level 1 for a change that is.
Mike
Saturday, December 08, 2007
A Final Table and Another Cash
So I finished 2nd for $26.5K in one of the nightly $1K 2nd chance tournaments, and then 23rd in the $3K the next day for $5K. Let's see if I can remember how I managed to pull that off...
$1K 2nd Chance
Hand 1: I managed to double my stack to 10K by the first break. One hand that was sort of interesting was when I saw a flop with T9o in the SB at 25/50 after 2 limpers. Flop AJ8 2 spades, EP limper bets 200, button calls, and I call as well. Turn is a low spade and I lead for 500 and take it down.
Hand 2: I just got seated at a new table and arrive just in time to post my ante @ 100/200 a25. I'm still unracking my chips as it goes raise to 650 from EP, next to act calls, and I look at AA and make it 2050. Both call, the flop comes ten-high, original raiser bets 1K with 1100 behind (lol). Next guy folds I ship it and lose to his JJ that backdoors a flush to drop to 5800.
Hand 3: I open AJs in the CO to 1100 at 200/400 a25 with another 4K behind. Button ships on me and I decide to fold because he hasn't really done anything and it's live poker. As it turns out I definitely should have called this guy because he knew what he was doing but I think it was kind of a close decision.
Hand 4: 2 hands later open to 1100 with JJ, SB ships it on me with A5o for some reason even though he has no fold equity and I hold.
Hand 5: UTG ships around 5K at 300/600 a50 and he has shown he doesn't need a monster to move in already. 3 players later moves in for just under 9K, it fold to me in the BB and I find 99. I think for a while and decide their ranges should be wide enough that I should call. They have AT and AQ and I flop quads to get to 25Kish.
Hand 6: With 14 left a seemingly very tight player opens for 23K with 12K behind at 800/1600 a200 in MP. I really thought he had something like JJ or AK here given how much he shoved and how close to the final table we were and decided to pass TT in the SB. As it turns out this guy was not exactly a nit.
Hand 7: Guy from last hand now has a ton of chips. grafyx told me a hand he played with him that let me know he's far from a nit like I thought. He opens to 6K at 1k/2k a300 in EP. We're now playing 10-handed at the final table, 9 spots pay. I find AKo in LP and ship 35K, he instacalls with JJ and I luckbox the flip to not bubble.
Hand 8: After that hand I didn't do a whole lot. I was fairly card dead but made it down to 4-handed. The guy from last two hands has gone psycho. He is raising like every hand. I don't know what happened. The way he was playing and acting at the table I seriously thought he must have got high on the last break or something. He was spite calling any time someone pushed on his raises and drawing out on tons of players. Anyways I open TT to 11K at 2k/4k a500 in the CO with maybe 40K behind, he shoves from the SB and I call and outflip him again, he had AK this time.
Hand 9: I'm still really card dead and 2 of the other 3 guys are insane so I'm just staying out of the way, occasionally shoving on the guy opening every pot when I find an ace or something. Finally the guy on my left busts and we get to 3 handed. The crazy guy is just running over the guy in the middle and he's clearly not going to do anything about it except wait for a big hand. I'm treading water still by moving in on his raises from time to time, mostly card dead though. Crazy guy folds one hand and guy in the middle is now short and shoves his SB for like 65K at 4k/8k a1k. I find ATo and call but lose to his J9o.
Hand 10: I'm now pretty short and move in with some random SB hand to pick up the blinds and antes and increase my stack to 70K still at 4k/8k a1k. I find ATs on the button and ship it in. BB thinks and calls with A4s which has to be correct against my range but I hold.
Hand 11: I open AA on the button to 20K. This is the first button I opened 3-handed in a long time. Crazy guy folds, BB ships in his shortish stack and I hold vs his KQo.
Hand 12: 6k/12K a1K. I limp the button with 9s6h and he checks. Flop JT8 2 spades, he checks and I check. Turn Ks he bets 13K, I make it 40K and he folds.
Hand 13: I'm now around even in chips. He limps the button and I check Q8o. Flop AA4, I check/call a 12K bet because Q-hi is going to be the best hand here an awful lot. Turn is another A and we both check. River is a 5, I check and he bets 40K. I've seen him make a big river bet like this once and he showed the goods when the guy folded. I really felt like he had rivered a 5 or he had nothing, and he might be using the fact that he had it last time to make a bluff more credible. Or he might just have it again. I decide to call and lose to his 42o :-(, not sure if I like this one.
Hand 14: I open 66 to 30K, he reraises and I ship it and lose to his QQ, flop Q6x for extra spite.
Oh well still a pretty good score and it was good to make a deep run live again, and have a final table go reasonbly well again for once. Bed time, $5K event tomorrow I'll do the $3K report another time I guess.
Mike
$1K 2nd Chance
Hand 1: I managed to double my stack to 10K by the first break. One hand that was sort of interesting was when I saw a flop with T9o in the SB at 25/50 after 2 limpers. Flop AJ8 2 spades, EP limper bets 200, button calls, and I call as well. Turn is a low spade and I lead for 500 and take it down.
Hand 2: I just got seated at a new table and arrive just in time to post my ante @ 100/200 a25. I'm still unracking my chips as it goes raise to 650 from EP, next to act calls, and I look at AA and make it 2050. Both call, the flop comes ten-high, original raiser bets 1K with 1100 behind (lol). Next guy folds I ship it and lose to his JJ that backdoors a flush to drop to 5800.
Hand 3: I open AJs in the CO to 1100 at 200/400 a25 with another 4K behind. Button ships on me and I decide to fold because he hasn't really done anything and it's live poker. As it turns out I definitely should have called this guy because he knew what he was doing but I think it was kind of a close decision.
Hand 4: 2 hands later open to 1100 with JJ, SB ships it on me with A5o for some reason even though he has no fold equity and I hold.
Hand 5: UTG ships around 5K at 300/600 a50 and he has shown he doesn't need a monster to move in already. 3 players later moves in for just under 9K, it fold to me in the BB and I find 99. I think for a while and decide their ranges should be wide enough that I should call. They have AT and AQ and I flop quads to get to 25Kish.
Hand 6: With 14 left a seemingly very tight player opens for 23K with 12K behind at 800/1600 a200 in MP. I really thought he had something like JJ or AK here given how much he shoved and how close to the final table we were and decided to pass TT in the SB. As it turns out this guy was not exactly a nit.
Hand 7: Guy from last hand now has a ton of chips. grafyx told me a hand he played with him that let me know he's far from a nit like I thought. He opens to 6K at 1k/2k a300 in EP. We're now playing 10-handed at the final table, 9 spots pay. I find AKo in LP and ship 35K, he instacalls with JJ and I luckbox the flip to not bubble.
Hand 8: After that hand I didn't do a whole lot. I was fairly card dead but made it down to 4-handed. The guy from last two hands has gone psycho. He is raising like every hand. I don't know what happened. The way he was playing and acting at the table I seriously thought he must have got high on the last break or something. He was spite calling any time someone pushed on his raises and drawing out on tons of players. Anyways I open TT to 11K at 2k/4k a500 in the CO with maybe 40K behind, he shoves from the SB and I call and outflip him again, he had AK this time.
Hand 9: I'm still really card dead and 2 of the other 3 guys are insane so I'm just staying out of the way, occasionally shoving on the guy opening every pot when I find an ace or something. Finally the guy on my left busts and we get to 3 handed. The crazy guy is just running over the guy in the middle and he's clearly not going to do anything about it except wait for a big hand. I'm treading water still by moving in on his raises from time to time, mostly card dead though. Crazy guy folds one hand and guy in the middle is now short and shoves his SB for like 65K at 4k/8k a1k. I find ATo and call but lose to his J9o.
Hand 10: I'm now pretty short and move in with some random SB hand to pick up the blinds and antes and increase my stack to 70K still at 4k/8k a1k. I find ATs on the button and ship it in. BB thinks and calls with A4s which has to be correct against my range but I hold.
Hand 11: I open AA on the button to 20K. This is the first button I opened 3-handed in a long time. Crazy guy folds, BB ships in his shortish stack and I hold vs his KQo.
Hand 12: 6k/12K a1K. I limp the button with 9s6h and he checks. Flop JT8 2 spades, he checks and I check. Turn Ks he bets 13K, I make it 40K and he folds.
Hand 13: I'm now around even in chips. He limps the button and I check Q8o. Flop AA4, I check/call a 12K bet because Q-hi is going to be the best hand here an awful lot. Turn is another A and we both check. River is a 5, I check and he bets 40K. I've seen him make a big river bet like this once and he showed the goods when the guy folded. I really felt like he had rivered a 5 or he had nothing, and he might be using the fact that he had it last time to make a bluff more credible. Or he might just have it again. I decide to call and lose to his 42o :-(, not sure if I like this one.
Hand 14: I open 66 to 30K, he reraises and I ship it and lose to his QQ, flop Q6x for extra spite.
Oh well still a pretty good score and it was good to make a deep run live again, and have a final table go reasonbly well again for once. Bed time, $5K event tomorrow I'll do the $3K report another time I guess.
Mike
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Quick Cliffs Notes of last Couple Days
I went semi-deep in the $2K NL event on Tuesday busting 37th when 27 paid. Then I played drunken 2/4 mixed games at TI for 12 hours straight which was a blast. I didn't want to play the $2500 on no sleep up for 24 hours already so I crashed for 5 hours and then played the $1K 2nd chance at 7:15. 11 hours later I finished second in that tournament for 28.5K, managed to get home and get a couple hours sleep, and now I'm off to play the $3K event today. There's only a senior's event tomorrow so drunken mixed games are likely to follow tonight, but I'll write a tourney report for these eventually.
Mike
Mike
Monday, December 03, 2007
Venetian $15K Report
That was probably the worst 2 levels of poker ever. I didn't win a single pot that had anything in it. My table was actually pretty good. Other than Greenstein, Juanda and a couple good internet players, the other guys were awful. Here is what I can remember from the trainwreck, sorry if I leave out details I'm trying to do this quickly so I can move on to pretending today never happened.
Hand 1: 100/100 30K chips. I'm sure I've spewed off a bit already. Beth Shak limps in MP, I make it 500 with KQo and she calls. Flop KQT 2 spades, she leads for 1200 I call. Turn 2c making a backdoor flush draw, she bets 3K I call. River Ac, she bets 6K I fold. Given that she bet this river I'm guessing there's a pretty good chance she flopped the straight, either that or she had like KJ I guess. I didn't really feel like bloating the pot earlier since her line seemed strong and even she might fold a lot of worse hands to too much action.
Hand 2: There's like a million hands where I call once and fold to further action which are pretty sick. I basically always flopped something marginal that I just couldn't call down with and lost my stack a bit at a time. Either that or I fire the flop with nothing and get called then give up. It was basically awesome.
Hand 3: AllusivePinkBunny shoves 6600 at 200/400, I call with JJ and 5700 in the SB, terrible old guy on my left obv has AA in the BB and we both get to go home. Back to Bellagio tomorrow I guess. Weeeeeeee.
Mike
Hand 1: 100/100 30K chips. I'm sure I've spewed off a bit already. Beth Shak limps in MP, I make it 500 with KQo and she calls. Flop KQT 2 spades, she leads for 1200 I call. Turn 2c making a backdoor flush draw, she bets 3K I call. River Ac, she bets 6K I fold. Given that she bet this river I'm guessing there's a pretty good chance she flopped the straight, either that or she had like KJ I guess. I didn't really feel like bloating the pot earlier since her line seemed strong and even she might fold a lot of worse hands to too much action.
Hand 2: There's like a million hands where I call once and fold to further action which are pretty sick. I basically always flopped something marginal that I just couldn't call down with and lost my stack a bit at a time. Either that or I fire the flop with nothing and get called then give up. It was basically awesome.
Hand 3: AllusivePinkBunny shoves 6600 at 200/400, I call with JJ and 5700 in the SB, terrible old guy on my left obv has AA in the BB and we both get to go home. Back to Bellagio tomorrow I guess. Weeeeeeee.
Mike
Sunday, December 02, 2007
Bellagio $5K report
Yo. My 0-for streak continues in $5k+ buy-in events. Here's how it went down.
Hand 1: I made the nuts against David Pham a few times and managed to basically win the minimum by trying to play way too fancy. Oops. Still chip up to 17K from 10K starting stack by first break.
Hand 2: I got moved from my original table with Greenstein, Pham, etc... to a new table with a bunch of good online players on my left but it didn't really matter because I never played a hand anyways. My 3rd table is awesome though and I win an ok pot here: 300/600 a50. Spewy guy on my right raises to 2K in MP, I call with KK and gigabet (darrell dicken) unfortunately does not squeeze, just making the call on the button. Flop is an ugly QQ2, and it checks around. Turn is a blank, raiser bets 3K, I call, and gigablocks calls. Turn blank, raiser now checks, I check, and gigablocks checks and shows 88, raiser has AJ and I win a decent pot, but not a great flop.
Hand 3: At this point I just nit it up for a while as I'm pretty card dead. Finally, at 1k/2k a300 Max Pescatori opens to 5500 in the CO, I shove 25K on the button with AJo, and he calls and wins with 55 to bust me 30th (18 pay). Fun 11 hours. I'm sure there were other interesting hands I'm forgetting but so much poker it's all blending together.
Tomorrow I'm planning to play Sundays online, and then most likely I'll still play the 15k at Venetian on Monday even though it's probably going to have a small, tough field.
Mike
Hand 1: I made the nuts against David Pham a few times and managed to basically win the minimum by trying to play way too fancy. Oops. Still chip up to 17K from 10K starting stack by first break.
Hand 2: I got moved from my original table with Greenstein, Pham, etc... to a new table with a bunch of good online players on my left but it didn't really matter because I never played a hand anyways. My 3rd table is awesome though and I win an ok pot here: 300/600 a50. Spewy guy on my right raises to 2K in MP, I call with KK and gigabet (darrell dicken) unfortunately does not squeeze, just making the call on the button. Flop is an ugly QQ2, and it checks around. Turn is a blank, raiser bets 3K, I call, and gigablocks calls. Turn blank, raiser now checks, I check, and gigablocks checks and shows 88, raiser has AJ and I win a decent pot, but not a great flop.
Hand 3: At this point I just nit it up for a while as I'm pretty card dead. Finally, at 1k/2k a300 Max Pescatori opens to 5500 in the CO, I shove 25K on the button with AJo, and he calls and wins with 55 to bust me 30th (18 pay). Fun 11 hours. I'm sure there were other interesting hands I'm forgetting but so much poker it's all blending together.
Tomorrow I'm planning to play Sundays online, and then most likely I'll still play the 15k at Venetian on Monday even though it's probably going to have a small, tough field.
Mike
Saturday, December 01, 2007
Vegas in the winter is wierd
Something just seems off here.... I have only ever been to Vegas in the summer during the WSOP. It's scorching hot every day, and the very thought of a cloud in the sky, let alone a raindrop falling from one, is laughable. While it's certainly much warmer here than Canada this time of the year, it's actually pretty cool out. Not only that, it rained all day today. I was in shock. However, one constant remains to let me know the world is alright. Me losing money in poker tournaments.
I was originally planning to play the $5K event at the Venetian today but their events have been getting basically no attendance. So instead I played the $3K tournament at the Bellagio. I still expect the $15K at Venetian to at least get a playable turnout on Monday, but that's the only tournament I'll be playing there now. The Bellagio tournament today attracted 220ish players iirc, so it was a pretty nice sized field. Unfortunately things didn't go very well for me, though it was partly my fault for sucking.
Hand 1: 25/50 I have 5750. Raise to 200 with AKo, 3 callers, BB makes it 650, I am extremely confused and call, only the last limper calls who is a seemingly aggressive but competent looking asian guy. The flop comes AK6 all spades. The reraiser now leads for 1K, I'm still confused as hell so I call and the overcaller instashoves. Reraiser now folds (wtf could you have had?), and I ended up tankng and folding. Pretty sure it's really clear that I should shove the first time around and then call. I was tired of calling and having live players show me the nuts over and over again, and I'm sure not wanting to bustout in the first level AGAIN came to mind, but I can't justify folding here at all getting big odds on the call. I figured it made way more sense for him to have 66 or some kind of suited connector preflop than a hand like QJo with the Ks, and it does, but whatever it's not like people don't play awful preflop, especially live.
Hand 2: Skip to bustout hand, I took a bunch of chips back off the aggro asian guy but then went card dead and got moved to a new table. 100/200 a 25, I have 7500. A seemingly tight/straightforward guy opens to 600 UTG. 2 people who basically never have a hand call, and I find JJ OTB. I'm torn between just calling and taking a flop and reraising. If I reraise I basically have to call a shove so long as AK is in his reshove range, but it's really not clear that's the case. In fact I'm sure a lot of live players wouldn't have to think too hard about laying down AK in his spot, but it's still pretty awful to reraise and then fold. In that case the fact that I have JJ is almost irrelevant if I do that. I'm basically just bluffing and I might as well have any two cards. If the two callers weren't there I would just call, but with their dead money in the pot it makes reraising a lot better, and calling a lot worse. So I made it 2500, UTG moved in pretty quickly. I really didn't think he'd be so confident with AK, but getting over 2.5:1 I call and lose to AA.
I then went to dinner at Mesa Grill I think it ws called in Caesar's Palace with Kyle (grafyx) and Jason (JP_OSU) because Kyle said it was really good. The waiter began by asking us if we knew about who their chef is. Ummm nope. It's [name]. OK... You've probably heard of him as the Iron Chef. Oooooh, I've heard of that show, cool. Anyways, he told us about how he uses a lot of southwest style spices, combining "sweet and heat" to bring out the flavour in the chiles and other hot spices he uses. At this point I was already getting pretty excited about the meal because I love those types of sauces, a bit spicy but with a lot of flavour, not just burning. And the meal delivered. My main course was a ribeye steak in a chipotle glaze with two kinds of chile sauces. Also, mixing mashed potatoes with a pesto was a delicious twist, and shrimp in corn-based sauce as an appetizer was also excellent. So kudos to the Iron Chef. I'm still not going to watch your show though.
After dinner we headed back to Bellagio and registered for the $1k 2nd chance tournament. We had some time to kill so Kyle and I played a shoe of blackjack and ran insanely good, I made $100. Perhaps i should just stick to -EV gambling. The $1K tournament was relatively uninteresting. The play was really really bad, and I got off to a good start but then went card dead and eventually pushed into the aces. $5k at Bellagio tomorrow should be a fun one though. Gonna get some sleep now.
Mike
I was originally planning to play the $5K event at the Venetian today but their events have been getting basically no attendance. So instead I played the $3K tournament at the Bellagio. I still expect the $15K at Venetian to at least get a playable turnout on Monday, but that's the only tournament I'll be playing there now. The Bellagio tournament today attracted 220ish players iirc, so it was a pretty nice sized field. Unfortunately things didn't go very well for me, though it was partly my fault for sucking.
Hand 1: 25/50 I have 5750. Raise to 200 with AKo, 3 callers, BB makes it 650, I am extremely confused and call, only the last limper calls who is a seemingly aggressive but competent looking asian guy. The flop comes AK6 all spades. The reraiser now leads for 1K, I'm still confused as hell so I call and the overcaller instashoves. Reraiser now folds (wtf could you have had?), and I ended up tankng and folding. Pretty sure it's really clear that I should shove the first time around and then call. I was tired of calling and having live players show me the nuts over and over again, and I'm sure not wanting to bustout in the first level AGAIN came to mind, but I can't justify folding here at all getting big odds on the call. I figured it made way more sense for him to have 66 or some kind of suited connector preflop than a hand like QJo with the Ks, and it does, but whatever it's not like people don't play awful preflop, especially live.
Hand 2: Skip to bustout hand, I took a bunch of chips back off the aggro asian guy but then went card dead and got moved to a new table. 100/200 a 25, I have 7500. A seemingly tight/straightforward guy opens to 600 UTG. 2 people who basically never have a hand call, and I find JJ OTB. I'm torn between just calling and taking a flop and reraising. If I reraise I basically have to call a shove so long as AK is in his reshove range, but it's really not clear that's the case. In fact I'm sure a lot of live players wouldn't have to think too hard about laying down AK in his spot, but it's still pretty awful to reraise and then fold. In that case the fact that I have JJ is almost irrelevant if I do that. I'm basically just bluffing and I might as well have any two cards. If the two callers weren't there I would just call, but with their dead money in the pot it makes reraising a lot better, and calling a lot worse. So I made it 2500, UTG moved in pretty quickly. I really didn't think he'd be so confident with AK, but getting over 2.5:1 I call and lose to AA.
I then went to dinner at Mesa Grill I think it ws called in Caesar's Palace with Kyle (grafyx) and Jason (JP_OSU) because Kyle said it was really good. The waiter began by asking us if we knew about who their chef is. Ummm nope. It's [name]. OK... You've probably heard of him as the Iron Chef. Oooooh, I've heard of that show, cool. Anyways, he told us about how he uses a lot of southwest style spices, combining "sweet and heat" to bring out the flavour in the chiles and other hot spices he uses. At this point I was already getting pretty excited about the meal because I love those types of sauces, a bit spicy but with a lot of flavour, not just burning. And the meal delivered. My main course was a ribeye steak in a chipotle glaze with two kinds of chile sauces. Also, mixing mashed potatoes with a pesto was a delicious twist, and shrimp in corn-based sauce as an appetizer was also excellent. So kudos to the Iron Chef. I'm still not going to watch your show though.
After dinner we headed back to Bellagio and registered for the $1k 2nd chance tournament. We had some time to kill so Kyle and I played a shoe of blackjack and ran insanely good, I made $100. Perhaps i should just stick to -EV gambling. The $1K tournament was relatively uninteresting. The play was really really bad, and I got off to a good start but then went card dead and eventually pushed into the aces. $5k at Bellagio tomorrow should be a fun one though. Gonna get some sleep now.
Mike
Monday, November 26, 2007
It feels like I've been kicked in the groin repeatedly
Today was the best Sunday I've had in a long time, I doubt I've ever gone deep in as many tournaments in one day as I did today. But it was the same story that's been happening every time to me lately, things just didn't go well when I got down to two tables. I final tabled the $530 tournament on Party but busted 9th for $1100. I went pretty deep in the $100 massive overlay $150K guaranteed tourney on Mansion before shoving all-in with 53o to win the blinds not realizing there was an UTG raise because the chip was almost the same colour as the felt in the interface, which is still a completely stupid thing to do, and I busted 35th when his AK sucked out on me. Next was the Full Tilt 750K Guaranteed, where I ran 88 into QQ to leave me with 400 chips at the 300/600 level. 90 mins later I had 50K, well above average in the money, but my cinderella run ended in 150th or so when I finally lost a race. Next up was the UB $530 tournament, again I made the final table, with a solid stack this time, but I made a small mistake that cost me a few chips, and then got busted when my AK was unable to hold vs AT on the river. Alright, well at least I have a few tournaments left I guess and I happen to be doing reasonably well in them.
The Full Tilt $150 buy-in was a roller coaster where I had a huge stack early, then donked it off, and then grinded my way back. In the end my AKs was no match for an opponent's Q2o (on the river yet again) in a pot that would have given me an average stack with 15 left. Nonetheless, I was running so good in the early part of tournaments today that I had yet another chance to make that big score. My last tournament of the day as usual was the Stars $200 rebuy, and it's a pretty big one. As we got close to the money, which was the final 3 tables in this case, I finally started to pick up some hands and by the time we got down to 15 players I was in the middle of the pack. Anyways we'll proceed to bustout hand I'll at least talk a little strategy because so far this entry is just me whining.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1740682
So it folds to me in the SB with 55. The effective stacks are around 21xBB deep, so against a good aggressive player like roothlus if it comes down to it I'm almost certainly going to have to play for my whole stack, my hand is just too strong to allow myself to get pushed off of in this situation. However, with so many short stacks still in and approaching the final table I'd prefer to play the hand in such a way as to avoid a big coinflip, but without forcing myself into a spot where I'm getting the worst of it. The standard play would just be to raise, and if he moves in on me I'm not happy about it but I'd have to call since there would be dead money in the pot and his range would be pretty wide. If he shows up with a bigger pair it's just unlucky. The problem with this is if he just calls I'm in the awkward spot of playing 55 out of position in a pot that is already big, or if he decides to move in on me as a bluff he's still going to accidentally only be a coinflip most of the time. So I feel the superior play I made was to limp. A lot of players will raise this limp with an extremely wide range of hands, and then I can move in on him putting the ugly decision back on him, and often just picking off a steal attempt. Of course if he ends up calling it's probably still a coinflip, and if he has a bigger pair I was likely destined to go broke anyways. If he checks behind I have a pair in a small pot where I have more room to maneuver. Of course as it turns out he did have the bigger pair and busted me in 12th.
In the end I probably made around $3K today I guess, too lazy to add it up right now. Oh well, so Thursday I head to Vegas which I'm obviously looking forward to. With any luck I'll break out of my tournament slump at just the right time for the bigger tournaments there. And of course that means more frequent and likely more interesting blog entries for you as well.
Mike
The Full Tilt $150 buy-in was a roller coaster where I had a huge stack early, then donked it off, and then grinded my way back. In the end my AKs was no match for an opponent's Q2o (on the river yet again) in a pot that would have given me an average stack with 15 left. Nonetheless, I was running so good in the early part of tournaments today that I had yet another chance to make that big score. My last tournament of the day as usual was the Stars $200 rebuy, and it's a pretty big one. As we got close to the money, which was the final 3 tables in this case, I finally started to pick up some hands and by the time we got down to 15 players I was in the middle of the pack. Anyways we'll proceed to bustout hand I'll at least talk a little strategy because so far this entry is just me whining.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1740682
So it folds to me in the SB with 55. The effective stacks are around 21xBB deep, so against a good aggressive player like roothlus if it comes down to it I'm almost certainly going to have to play for my whole stack, my hand is just too strong to allow myself to get pushed off of in this situation. However, with so many short stacks still in and approaching the final table I'd prefer to play the hand in such a way as to avoid a big coinflip, but without forcing myself into a spot where I'm getting the worst of it. The standard play would just be to raise, and if he moves in on me I'm not happy about it but I'd have to call since there would be dead money in the pot and his range would be pretty wide. If he shows up with a bigger pair it's just unlucky. The problem with this is if he just calls I'm in the awkward spot of playing 55 out of position in a pot that is already big, or if he decides to move in on me as a bluff he's still going to accidentally only be a coinflip most of the time. So I feel the superior play I made was to limp. A lot of players will raise this limp with an extremely wide range of hands, and then I can move in on him putting the ugly decision back on him, and often just picking off a steal attempt. Of course if he ends up calling it's probably still a coinflip, and if he has a bigger pair I was likely destined to go broke anyways. If he checks behind I have a pair in a small pot where I have more room to maneuver. Of course as it turns out he did have the bigger pair and busted me in 12th.
In the end I probably made around $3K today I guess, too lazy to add it up right now. Oh well, so Thursday I head to Vegas which I'm obviously looking forward to. With any luck I'll break out of my tournament slump at just the right time for the bigger tournaments there. And of course that means more frequent and likely more interesting blog entries for you as well.
Mike
Monday, November 19, 2007
It was a good week until Sunday
I'm just on such a cold streak in tournaments right now though. The live final table at Foxwoods was great but busting 7th really sucked and other than that I've just had no final tables lately. I've busted with two tables left so many times it's pretty frustrating. Anyways I made the money in the big FTOPS $2500 event just grinding on a short stack the entire tournament, then sucked out to double up and then got it in with 99 vs 88 and held to get an above average stack for the first time in the tournament. From there I got outflopped in basically every pot I played and probably paid off more than I had to. I then busted out on this attempted hero call against a guy who kept calling my raises with weak hands and flopping gin on me.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1717346
The call was maybe bad because he likely thought I was a huge call station at this point and was therefore less likely to try to bluff me, but there's so many busted draws out there and I played the hand passively so it's quite possible I can have the best hand, especially as I doubt he makes this bet with anything except trips or better, or a complete bluff. I made a thread on 2+2 about the hand and a lot of good players said they like the call, though one guy who said he played with the opponent earlier in the tournament didn't think he was likely to run a big bluff like this, but of course I couldn't know that at the time from what I'd seen anyways. So it was a pretty crappy way to go from finally getting chips for the first time after 8 hours of play over 2 days to immediately donking them all off and busting for only $6k (first was over $400K) in 32nd or something.
I had no cashes in anything else on Sunday, and not on Saturday either iirc, so it was still a pretty bad weekend. Cash games had been going well all week until I lost $20K playing 200/400 PLO Sunday night. It's a lot of money but in relation to the stakes it's nothing to even write about really. Still up to $20K on the week at that, and also had good success in my 10/20 and 25/50 NL games though I didn't play a ton of hands, so overall I guess it was a pretty good week, just a sour end.
I'm in Toronto for another week and a half and then I'm heading down to Vegas for a bunch of tournaments. First is the National Poker League Vegas Open at the Venetian. I had never heard of it either but there's a $5K event and a $15K event that I'm going to play. I like the poker room at the Venetian a lot from the one tournament I played there over the summer. These will likely have smaller fields, which usually means tougher fields and not such huge top prizes, but it also decreases the variance a lot which isn't bad when playing such big buy-ins. After that I will be playing a ton of the Bellagio Cup events culminating in the $15K Championship event. Then I leave Vegas, fly back to Toronto for a couple days, and then head home to St. John's for Christmas. I'm back in Toronto for New Years and then off to Melbourne, Australia on Jan 2 for the Aussie Millions where I will be for just over 2 weeks playing most of the events in that series as well. I'll probably take a nice break from travel for a month or 2 after that, but who knows.
Mike
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1717346
The call was maybe bad because he likely thought I was a huge call station at this point and was therefore less likely to try to bluff me, but there's so many busted draws out there and I played the hand passively so it's quite possible I can have the best hand, especially as I doubt he makes this bet with anything except trips or better, or a complete bluff. I made a thread on 2+2 about the hand and a lot of good players said they like the call, though one guy who said he played with the opponent earlier in the tournament didn't think he was likely to run a big bluff like this, but of course I couldn't know that at the time from what I'd seen anyways. So it was a pretty crappy way to go from finally getting chips for the first time after 8 hours of play over 2 days to immediately donking them all off and busting for only $6k (first was over $400K) in 32nd or something.
I had no cashes in anything else on Sunday, and not on Saturday either iirc, so it was still a pretty bad weekend. Cash games had been going well all week until I lost $20K playing 200/400 PLO Sunday night. It's a lot of money but in relation to the stakes it's nothing to even write about really. Still up to $20K on the week at that, and also had good success in my 10/20 and 25/50 NL games though I didn't play a ton of hands, so overall I guess it was a pretty good week, just a sour end.
I'm in Toronto for another week and a half and then I'm heading down to Vegas for a bunch of tournaments. First is the National Poker League Vegas Open at the Venetian. I had never heard of it either but there's a $5K event and a $15K event that I'm going to play. I like the poker room at the Venetian a lot from the one tournament I played there over the summer. These will likely have smaller fields, which usually means tougher fields and not such huge top prizes, but it also decreases the variance a lot which isn't bad when playing such big buy-ins. After that I will be playing a ton of the Bellagio Cup events culminating in the $15K Championship event. Then I leave Vegas, fly back to Toronto for a couple days, and then head home to St. John's for Christmas. I'm back in Toronto for New Years and then off to Melbourne, Australia on Jan 2 for the Aussie Millions where I will be for just over 2 weeks playing most of the events in that series as well. I'll probably take a nice break from travel for a month or 2 after that, but who knows.
Mike
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