EPT High Roller Day 2

Well as most people probably know by now I finished 3rd for 241K pounds. It was a tough tournament and I never had a ton of chips so I was pretty happy with the finish, and obviously it's by far my 2nd biggest cash ever. I guess a lot of the hands have been reported pretty accurately elsewhere so I'll try not to focus too much on those but I do want to write a little recap.

Early on I was able to pick up a few pots where I reraised David Benyamine but I was otherwise fairly card dead. Between the blinds getting big leaving me on an awkward stack size and the fact that 9th paid around 2.5 buy-ins making it a really big bubble I didn't have much choice but to play very tight. I hung in until the final table but entered with a pretty short stack. Then I started coolering the other shortstacks, first Isabelle with AK vs her AJ and then Masaki with 99 vs Q9. I lost the latter though but then immediately picked up AA vs David's KJ (probably didn't move me up his list of favourite people at all =/) to bust him and AKs vs Masaki's AQs to bust my 3rd player and move into 2nd chip position. I then lost a couple small pots including this hand which was my only really tough spot at the final table. Here's a cut/paste of the strategy post I made on 2+2:

Weird river spot, all of call, fold and shove seemed pretty reasonable.

Relevant history or whatever first. 5-handed, errbody is playing super solid TAG except Scotty on my left who's super nitting it up.

5k/10k a1k. Last orbit I raised UTG to 27K and Peter defended his BB. Flop came 228 I c-bet 36K and he called. Turn and river were low cards and we checked it down and his TT was good.

I think effective stacks were around 300K for this hand. Next orbit I raise UTG again to 27K with A9s. As I'm putting in the chips Peter says "trying again are u?" or something to that effect, and I say "If at first you don't succeed...." Can't imagine that's terribly important but included for the sake of completeness. Folds to him in the BB and he calls.

Flop AK8r. He checks and I check behind. I think betting is obv fine too but I didn't do that. Turn 5d making a backdoor flush draw. He bets 37K I call. River 4h, he bets 65K and I???

So I ended up folding and I guess the commentator's weren't pleased I took so long but obviously it was kind of a hard decision and big fold. I felt like AT-AQ were by far his most likely holdings as he probably wouldn't call a hand like A6s preflop so all I beat was a bluff which I also thought was pretty unlikely.

So after that I folded a lot into 3rd, then won a bunch of pots in a row including a double up with QT vs A8. But then I busted when Juanda opened the button to 56K at 10k/20k and I shoved 400K and change I think with A7o and ran into his AK. I'm not thrilled about that spot but the shove has to be +EV against any reasonable range he's opening on the button there. The only way I can really fold is if I suspect the button raiser has a much tighter opening range than usual because he doesn't want to have to fold to a shove again. I think I would have folded A6o though, not sure if that makes any sense mathematically or not but there you go.

So next up is WPT Niagara just down the road from Toronto for me! I'm playing Day 1c on Sunday. I always look forward to this one since it`s my "home" event so to speak. Right after that I'm heading to Bellagio for whatever prelims I can play and then the Festa al Lago WPT event. So lots more live poker coming up in the next few weeks, we'll see if the ol' luckbox has anything left.

Mike