I touched down in Melbourne this afternoon and after checking into my hotel and withdrawing some money from the bank I pretty much headed straight down to the casino. I’ve never been to Crown before so on first impressions I’d have to say that the complex as a whole is pretty darn sweet. I don’t particularly like the poker room itself though; it sprawls all over the place and despite being divided into loosely-cordoned off sections it really is very messy on the eye. Some might call it a hive of activity, but I think it’s just cramped and chaotic.
Anyway, I played 5/10 for about five hours and finished up $2990. I pretty much owe it all to one big hand in which I massively coolered two people - I had 68c in a raised pot and the flop came 579cc. One opponent had 99 (although she only had about $400) and another had 55 (he had my full 200bb buy-in well covered) and I got it in on the flop against both and held.
On the whole the standard of play was absolutely atrocious; people were opening 8x, check-calling huge bets with gutshots and ace high, and betting three times the pot on the flop. It definitely bodes well for me and I’m looking forward to having a good week at the cash game tables.
Tomorrow is the first tournament on my schedule; the $1650 no limit hold’em bounty feature event. Each bounty is worth a ridiculous $1000 so if I knock out just two people I’ll be up for the tournament even if I don’t cash! Awesome! I’m really hoping to get off to a good start tomorrow and place well to set the tone for the rest of the series. Wish me luck.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Thursday, January 15, 2009
PCA, Atlantis Resort and Casino, Bahamas - Trip Report Part 2
Day 2
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!
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!
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
PCA, Atlantis Resort and Casino, Bahamas - Trip Report Part 1
I just got back from the Bahamas yesterday and already have to start packing for Melbourne tomorrow. Ah, the life of a poker player, it’s tough! :DMy week in the Bahamas was pretty damn awesome. We arrived pretty late on the 4th and just had enough time to get down to the Royal Deck and catch the end of the PokerStars welcome party. Despite being given underage wristbands by mistake and having to spend 10 minutes convincing the bartenders that we were indeed over 18, we managed to have a pretty good time and Antony got the thrill of his life when he got to have his picture taken with Humberto.
Afterwards we headed down to Coral Lobby to have a drink and to see whether online players, despite being in one of the sickest resorts in the world, really did while away their time playing online poker instead. We weren’t disappointed, and to top it off we found Daniel Negreanu sitting there by himself too! Despite my detailed explanations as to why it made no sense, Antony went up to him and offered him a beer. He duly got rejected.
We then headed down to Atlas Bar and Grill (an American style diner) and got our first taste of American food and portion sizes (do you see what I did there?). We ordered some Nachos and Chilli Fries and the latter were a massive hit, though I don’t think they’d quite get the Heart Foundation’s tick of approval down here in Australia. 
To finish off the night we headed down to the poker room to see how everything worked. I saw Tom Dwan and Andrew Robl in a three-handed 100/200 game and felt pretty sympathetic for the third guy who seemed like he was getting seriously sharked. He had durrrr to his left and his girlfriend/wife sitting behind him watching. I don’t know if he realised how bad a spot it was for him, but I later saw him with Ivan Demidov so maybe he is some sick Russian player that I haven’t heard of.
The next day (the 5th) we went down to the poker room again to see day 1A of the main event in action. I was pretty surprised to see so many pros, especially non-PokerStars ones, and was especially happy to catch glimpses of Negreanu, Chris Ferguson and Phil Galfond among others.
The rest of the day we acquainted ourselves with the lazy river and the various rapids and slides that branched off from it. It was loads of fun and I couldn’t wait to bust from the tournament the next day so that I could return as soon as possible. Ok, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but you get what I mean!
I went to bed at about midnight and watched some CardRunners MTT videos. I was pretty jetlagged and tired by this point though and continually drifted off while watching TravestyFund explain some basic point. After rewinding it about 10 times to understand what he was saying, at about 1AM I simply gave up and said to myself “You know what you know Joey, just rest and see how you go”.
Day 1B
I woke up pretty early the next day and headed straight down to the poker room to pick up my receipt with my table number and my seat number. I paced around, scanned the room and slowly took everything in. Soon, a realisation came upon me.
I had made it.
Three years ago I watched awestruck as players paid $10,000 to have their chance at winning millions on the WPT. Three years ago I bought a chipset on a whim and learnt how to play with my friends. We played pub tournaments every week, bet top pair like top set, and spouted Sklansky like gospel. We had no clue what we were doing, but had so much fun doing it.
And now, three years later, I was doing it all for real.
I turned on Forever Young by Youth Group on my iPod, my song of choice in early-2006, and took my seat.
Whatever happened, I had made it.
* * *
My first table was pretty tough, with four aggressive young online players filling seats 3 to 6. I was in the 10 seat, and pretty fortunate to be away from all the 3-betting and squeezing. I was also fortunate to have two very tight players to my left and a weaker player two to my right who showed some pretty basic leaks (open limped a lot, defended his blind way too light, check-raise-tanked a lot with value hands, etc.). This meant that (in theory anyway) I could steal light and isolate a lot. Directly to my right was a tight young online player and three to my right was an older Mexican dude who busted literally 10 minutes into the tournament. He was soon replaced with none other than Gus Hansen.
We were given 20,000 chip starting stacks with 75 minute levels, starting at 50/100. We were to play 8 levels on day 1, finishing at around 1AM.
The first six levels of the day proved extremely uneventful for me and I hovered between 16000 chips to 28000 chips throughout this time. I was pretty card dead throughout and found it hard to do those small but pivotal steals with stuff like JTo from the hijack because so often it was already raised or re-raised by the time it got to me. Thus I never really got to build up my stack as the pots I won merely counteracted the numerous blinds that I had to give up.
During this time I played maybe four or five relatively significant medium sized pots. In one I raised UTG to 300 with JJ and got called in four spots. The flop came 975r and I led for 900 and got called by the button and the big blind. The turn paired the 7 and brought a flush draw. We checked to the button who bet just over half the pot and the big blind and I both pretty quickly mucked. It felt a bit weak but I didn’t see him betting TT or a nine here and I didn’t think I could stand a river bet no matter what card came (unless it was a Jack obviously) so check/calling the turn only to check/fold every river seemed pretty gross.
In another hand I had 89o (no spade) from the small blind in a near family pot. The 6TKss flop was checked through and on the turn the Qs fell, giving me a double gutshot. I decided to lead out and the button called. This was probably my only ‘live’ misdemeanor of the whole tournament as I didn’t actually notice that there were three spades on board. I don’t think it would’ve changed my action much though as there’s very little chance someone has a flush after the flop checks through as most people would stab a flush draw on the flop. It does however mean that I will probably have to double barrel most rivers as I could easily get peeled by random middle pairs with a flush draw type hands. The river brought the 2s and after recovering from the shock of seeing four spades on board I bet out about 1900 into 3300 and got raised and obviously folded. I still think it’s a pretty decent spot to bluff though as only the As really feels comfortable here and he can’t have A6o or AKo too often here so his calling/raising range is limited to like AQ or AT with the As only. I’m also pretty much the only person on the table who can actually represent the nut flush fairly well too as from the small blind it’s not unreasonable that I wouldn’t lead a flush draw into five or six people on the flop. Anyway, that pot took me down to my lowest point of the day, about 16000.
I got back to 20000 after I 3-bet Gus with QQ to about 1900 and the tight German player to my left shipped all-in for 5000 total with JJ. I had 3-bet three times up till then and all of them had been as a bluff (A9o, K7s and 89o) so it was nice that when I finally had to showdown a 3-bet hand I was able to table the goods and maintain my image.
Gus got involved in a pretty cool hand soon after which I thought I’d recount here. A player with 9600 chips limped for 600 in EP and Gus isolated to about 2000. It was folded back to the limper who shoved and Gus thought for about five minutes before saying “I really feel like you have two fours there and my hand does pretty well against two fours”. He eventually made the call with J9o and sure enough the limper flips over 44. It reminded me of his call against Antonio Esfandiari’s 77 with T8s and demonstrates a real method to his madness. To anyone else it’s a completely sick and crazy call, but to him it’s as standard as calling an all-in with AK against someone else’s QQ. (That said, I’ve seen him fold AKs versus 77 too so I’m not sure what conclusion I should actually be drawing!)
Anyway, in another hand I opened the button with K9o to 2000 and was called by the big blind. The flop came AK2 with two hearts (I had none) and the big blind check/called my half pot bet. We checked through an offsuit jack turn and my opponent led for 4000 into 11000 on the offsuit 2 river. I thought for quite a bit before deciding to make the call. With the two pairing on the river I didn’t see him betting an ace which was splitting with any other ace (Aces and Twos with a King kicker). This left only AJ as a real possibility (AK 3-bets preflop, A2 check-raises the flop). However, his bet size was so small that I had difficulty believing he was bluffing and thus had trouble making the call. When I did eventually call, he actually turned over the same hand, K9o, so we split the pot. I don’t know what his thought process was at all to be honest.
In the last hand before dinner I won a pretty nice pot to hit my pre-Level 7 peak of 28000. I flatted an EP raise in the cutoff with AQo, called a bet on an A88r flop, checked back a K turn which brought a flush draw, and called a 1/2 pot river bet on an offsuit 5 river. My opponent showed QJo.
For dinner I had a spinach salad from Atlas Bar (my first meal of the day) and returned ready and raring to go.
Our table broke up soon after and I got moved to the 9 seat at a nine-handed table with a huge tallstack to my direct right. The first notable hand I played there a player opened UTG to about 3K and I shipped 28K from the button with AKo. He called and tabled KK and I was halfway to the door when the flop bricked massively (not even a backdoor straight available!). The turn bricked as well but fortunately the poker gods heard my prayers and the dealer turned over the most beautiful ace of diamonds I’ve ever seen. Easy game.
The next notable hand I played was actually pretty mundane but could’ve been absolutely sick and I still wonder to this day what may have been. The tallstack opened from the hijack and I decided to flat with AQh in the cutoff. I’m obviously way ahead of his range and can take down the pot a huge proportion of the time if I 3-bet here, but I felt that I would hate getting 4-bet 40 big blinds deep and this hand played pretty well postflop anyway so it was worth seeing a flop and saving 3-betting for bluffs since his most likely reaction to a 3-bet is to fold anyway.
The big blind whose KK I had just cracked called the rest of his stack off so we had a sidepot of 800 between the tallstack and myself. The flop came pretty disgusting, 358 with two clubs and one spade. The cutoff checked and I thought about stabbing since the preflop raiser is often check/folding if he checks this type of flop. I decided however that I probably had him beat anyway with AQ high and with the big blind still in the pot it wasn’t worth stabbing half the main pot if I only really stood to win the 800 sidepot since the big blind probably had Ace high beat.
The turn brought a 9 or T (not sure) and a third club and the cutoff led for about half the pot and this is where it got interesting. I really felt that he would c-bet any flush draw so it was extraordinarily unlikely that he had a flush here. At best, he had a weak one pair hand, though I really thought he would check/call most of them on this scary a board and play a bit of pot control. To me it really seemed like he had the ace of clubs and if this was the case in all likelihood I had a better kicker and had him beat. I didn’t really like just calling though as if he does have a weak one pair hand I’m going to look ridiculous when I check back the river and he wins with a pair of fives or something and moreover if he does have the nut flush draw I don’t want him to get a free card. So I thought about putting in a raise.
Herein lay a problem though. I didn’t know how he’d react to a raise. Would he shove? Would he fold? Would he just call? I really had no idea. If he shoved, I couldn’t see myself raise/calling off a 40bb stack. I was confident in my read, but not THAT confident. If he called, I’d be happier, but still not that happy, since he still had 12 outs to beat me. In the end, I really was just praying that he’d fold.
And this is actually a common problem in poker. A lot of people think poker is all about hand reading. Daniel Negreanu is sick because he can read hands like they’re face up right? Well, not really. What is arguably more important is knowing what your opponent will do with his hand, how he’ll react to your bets and raises. This idea most commonly arises when you’re deciding whether to fire a bluff. You know he has a weak hand, but is he good enough to fold it?
In the end, I decided to take the easy route out and fold. The big blind’s presence and probable hold on the main pot definitely swayed my decision though, and I really wonder what I would’ve done had it been a normal heads-up pot. Anyway, the cutoff did show Ac4x and ended up bricking so the big blind tripled up with T3d for a pair of threes.
Soon after I got moved to a new table (with Humberto!) for the last level of the day and went on a little bit of a rush. I picked up some hands and managed to win more pots uncontested preflop than I had all day till then. I also won a small pot with a set when the raiser check/folded the flop, and zoomed up to about 85K when I won a race with AK v QQ for a 65,000 pot. The action went something like UTG opened, I 3-bet with AK to 9000, and someone else behind shoved for about 30000 total. UTG folded JJ and I binked two aces on the flop. Awesome game.
With 13 seconds to go in the day and a hand having just finished the players on my table breathed a sigh of relief as they had made it through day 1. But I was having none of it! I had just paid both blinds and was desperate to get my button before tables were redrawn for day 2. I asked the dealer for one last hand and he obliged. Everyone turbo-folded to me on the button and I gleefully got ready to steal. I took a peek at my cards and was pleasantly surprised by the sight of two kings. I opened to 3000, the small blind 3-bet to 9000 with 35000 more behind, and I shipped. He quickly folded AJ and I smiled. Things were beginning to look up. I finished the day with 96,600 in the chips, safely above the average of about 75,000.
