PCA, Niagara and Stuff

Hey guys! If you've been following my tweets you'll know I was able to min-cash the main event at PCA for $15K. I also played the Half NLHE half PLO event and $1600 side event there but had no luck. Then I flew back to Toronto and drove down to play the $5k event at Niagara Falls instead of staying to play the either the $5k event or high roller event in the Bahamas. I felt really good about that decision when the field consisted of 155 players of which there were probably less than 10 I would consider good. For such a big buy-in it was great value but unfortunately I played a little sloppy and didn't catch many hands in the fast structure to bust early. I leave for the Aussie Millions on Sunday and I'm pumped to get down there to enjoy the weather and try to win some tournaments.

One interesting hand from PCA main on Day 2: I rarely pick up solid reads live but this was one case I should have trusted one.

I open 5h5 in the HJ and the BB, who is a middle aged guy who has shown he's capable of being spewy aggro, calls. The flop comes KT6hh and I check behind. I'd raised his blind several times and he'd always folded to my continuation bets, but he'd shown he's capable of checkraising with air and I felt like I might get played back at a lot this time. The turn is the 3h and he bets like half pot, I call. River 2s, He insta-shoves for like 1.5 times the pot. Whenever I'd seen him act so quickly before he'd always been bluffing, plus the overbet from this type of player can often be a bluff. I didn't end up feeling sure enough of my read at that point and folded, and he showed A9dd =/ I saw the tell once or twice more after that before he busted and it was rock solid, oh well.

I managed to run my stack back up after that hand and after we got in the money I got AA all-in against Jon Aguiar's A9 and lost. I don't think I've taken any other bad beats like that deepish in big live tourneys so I guess I was due for one, oh well. I actually never got out to the beach and water park once the entire trip. The weather was mostly bad though, there were only 1 or 2 days that were nice enough but I felt more in the mood to play poker anyways. Timex ended up winning the $1600 side event for ~$150K.

I played online the last couple nights but had no luck despite making several deep runs. If I keep going deep though I like my chances to hit a big score soon.

Mike