I looked up my table draw about an hour before the start of play and was pretty happy with what I saw. No notable pros, no notable online MTT players (I don’t think so anyway), and no annoying shortstacks! I was the chipleader on my table and the players on it came from all parts of the globe, from Hungary to Bermuda to the UK. This is usually a pretty good sign as non-US players are generally much weaker.
There were about 390 players remaining at this point out of the 1467 player starting field and 199 were to be paid. With an above average chipstack, I was pretty confident at being able to outlast half the remaining field and make the money.
I got to the table pretty early and had time to chat with the young UK player. He turned out to be a Party 2+2 reg whose name I knew pretty well and we’d played together online a few times before, though I didn’t have many reads on him as I played 3/6 to 5/10 with a bit of 10/20 while he played 5/10 but predominantly 10/20 and 25/50.
For the entire day I was ridiculously card dead and literally only played about two hands per level. I’ve never seen so many 73o, 62o and jack-rags in my life! I remember getting Jx three times in a row at one stage and each time the first card I saw was the jack. I remember chanting “please this time be jacks” but it was never to any avail.
I was down as low as 65,000 at one stage but managed to recover a fair bit towards the end of level 2 when I opened AJs from the small blind to 6000 and got shoved on by the big blind with KQo for about 25,000 more. The board ran AJxQx and my hand held to put me back to about 100,000. A little while later I opened from the small blind again to 6000 with KQh and got 3-bet to 17,000. It was a little disconcerting that he didn’t just shove as my plan was to raise/call if he did. He had about 52,000 to start the hand and after a little thought I decided to just go with my original plan and stick the rest in (now with the added boon of a little fold equity if he’s one of those weird players who 3-bet/folds a third of their stack). He quickly called and turned over J9o. I don’t mind his line as once he decides to go with the hand it’s certainly better to 3-bet/call or 3-bet and shove any flop than it is to simply 3-bet shove (the former looks way stronger than merely shoving and the latter folds out better hands if I somehow decide to see a flop with something like ATo and miss). The board bricked and I took down a pretty huge pot with king high.
That was to be my peak for the day and I hit the break with 155,000 in chips with the average at 139,000.
I played very few hands for the rest of the day and then got my stack whittled down to 100,000 when I got bluffed twice by the same player. I had seen him check-raise-fold once up till then and was pretty sure he had air then but couldn’t be certain. Anyway in the first hand he opened the button and I decided to flat 77 from the small blind. The big blind folded and I led a 962 flop. He quickly called and I check/folded the 3 turn when he quickly bet. I didn’t have enough information on him at this point to believe he was capable of floating in this spot with air and we were both pretty deep so I didn’t particularly want to face a huge river bet either. He turned over JQo or something similar.
The second hand was more interesting. A player raised in EP and the player from the previous hand and I both defended our blinds. I had 79s and the flop came KKT with two hearts. The flop checked through and the turn brought an offsuit 7. The small blind led for about 1/3 pot (I remember thinking how small his bet was) and I called and the preflop raiser folded. The turn brought arguably the worst card in the deck, the Jh, and my opponent fired 13K into 29K. Every conceivable hand got there, from the QJ straight draw to the AJ/AQ gutshot and overcard to the five high flush draw. And of course I could be beat by a king or ten already.
However something didn’t feel right. I didn’t think I could profitably call though as my hand loses to a lot of his value-come-blocking bets. My other option was to shove, and this was what I thought about doing for ages. It’s a really tough spot I think and I had a load of considerations to run through my head. First, I realised that I couldn’t really represent anything as there’s pretty much no way I can turn up with a full house here except with maybe JJ. I didn’t think he could really hand read though so that wasn’t too much of an issue for me. The second consideration was that, having just bluffed me out of a pot, I wasn’t sure whether he was the type to be more or less likely to bluff again. Most people tend to bluff less, especially when up against the same opponent, so that was another issue for me to weigh up. The most important consideration for me though, just as it was in the AQh v Ac4x hand, was that I simply didn’t know how he’d react to a shove. Was he capable of folding trips or a flush or even two pair here to a river shove? I simply had no idea. It would look incredibly stupid if I shove and he snaps off QJ for kings and jacks or something similar. In the end I let it go and he showed A5d for a complete bluff. Oh well.
A little while later with 204 players left on the scoreboard the tournament officials stopped the clock to do a headcount and begin hand for hand play. After a ten minute wait it turned out that the bubble had already burst as there were only 198 players left! What an anti-climax! To be honest though, I was pretty relieved not to have to play hand for hand and even more relieved to make the money. I wasn’t really rolled a month ago when I bought in directly for $10,000 and had pretty much resigned myself to losing it, so to get my money back was definitely a nice bonus.
Anyway, I didn’t really play any other significant pots until my bust-out hand. I had 94000 with the blinds at 2500/5000 with a 500 ante. With 12000 in dead money I decided to open ship 99 from utg+1. It’s definitely a bit of an overbet and it’s probably correct to raise to a normal amount instead but I really didn’t want to get flatted and play a difficult flop out of position. In later position I would happily raise/call because I think people are far more likely to re-shove 77 or AJ or something but from utg+1 I only ever saw myself getting flatted (which was gross) or 3-bet by better. Since I lose to the better anyway I thought I might as well avoid tough spots versus the former too. Anyway, it folded all the way around to the small blind who had 300,000 odd. He asked for a chip count and eventually made the call after about 3 minutes. I’m obviously pretty destroyed against his tank and call range which is something like JJ-TT and AQ so I asked him whether he had AQ, hoping beyond hope that he did. He shook his head and my heart sunk.
Then he flipped over AK.
WHAT.
He explained that I hadn’t played a hand all day and that he was losing if I held any pair. I felt almost insulted that he regarded me as that big a nit! lol
Anyway, the flop came an awesome 652 but the turn came a deadly ace of clubs and I was reduced to one out as he had four to a flush by this point too. I missed and was sent packing in 131st place with $12,500 in prize money. And so ended my first taste of a live 10K tournament.
All in all, not bad, but not great. I was happy to get my buy-in back as well as enough to cover my accommodation but I was a bit disappointed that I didn’t do more. Also, 130th was also the next payjump and received $15,000. Sigh.
Anyway, I spent the last four days just chilling and enjoying the resort. By day we swam or floated or slid, by night we drank and ate and played poker. It was an awesome time all-round. I played three cash game sessions and made like +500, +200 and -1000. I also staked Jason in a $60 SNG and he managed to come 2nd for $150. Antony and I had to listen to him vividly recount every single detail of the tournament for the rest of the week.
Anyway, it was definitely an awesome week and I’m really glad that I decided to go. As I said, I wasn’t remotely rolled at the time that I bought in (I had like 40K online and the package cost 13K) but I decided to follow my heart and go enjoy what really was a once in a lifetime opportunity. The poker gods evidently thought highly of this decision, as I was rewarded with a 47K heater in cash games in November and December, won 45K AUD at APPT Sydney and cashed at PCA! To be honest, I think buying into PCA actually caused me to play better in those months. Too often last year I was just grinding and grinding with no real reward to show for it other than a bigger balance on my screen. This caused poker to become pretty repetitive and boring. But once I realised that I was definitely going on an awesome holiday in the summer and that poker was paying for it, it made me realise just how much I’d achieved that year and motivated me to do more. I think it’s not a bad idea for all poker players to periodically step back, splash out and reward themselves for their efforts. It’s all too easy to focus on the 10K downswing and not on the fact that you’re still up 2K for the month and 50K for the year and making more than most people do in their part-time or even full-time jobs.
Anyway, I’m off to the Aussie Millions today and my flight leaves in six hours. I’ll try to do daily updates while I’m there as it’s going to be tough to come back in two weeks and recount ten days of poker. At the moment my plan is to play the $1650 bounty tournament and the $10500 main event. If I get knocked out of the main event (which I won’t!), I’ll play the $2200 six-max event for sure and possibly the $1100 mixed hold’em and $1100 turbo hold’em events as well. Here’s hoping my good summer run continues!
To finish, I thought I’d put up some more photos and videos of my unforgettable week in the Bahamas. Best of luck at the tables!
No comments:
Post a Comment