I won the afternoon $100 tournament on Ultimate Bet. It was a small field, just 99 players, but it was nice to win, since I final tabled yesterday only to go out on the first hand (TT
At that point, I was the chipleader, and mostly I just coasted from there. I stole a lot, then used my aggro reputation to get paid off. On the final table bubble, there was a pretty decent player named diptr0ng on my immediate left. He was chipleader and raising a lot, as he should have been. 7-handed, I restole over his UTG raise with like K8. He thought for a while and folded. Even if he had a hand, he’s got to give me some credit, since I’m jamming against an UTG raise, plus a lot of people don’t do stuff like that on the final table bubble, plus he doesn’t want to get crippled on the same bubble when he’s picking up chips so easily.
Except he does get crippled, because when it’s my button, he decides to pay me back. I had a feeling it was coming, too. Raised AJs, he insta-shoves from the SB, I snap call, and his K2o is no good. Unfortunately the rest of the table is too scared to call his short stack all ins and he chips up nicely to get back to a small but workable stack.
I didn’t do much early on at the final table, stole a little bit but mostly was pretty cautious. For a while there were a lot of short stacks, so I couldn’t open anything without showdown value, but once we got down to four-handed, the table was pretty polarized. I and the guy to my left, who was pretty straight-forward, had 90-100K each, and the other two had in the neighborhood of 20K each, with 1K/2K blinds.
My plan was mostly to wait out at least one of the shorties while keeping the other big stack from accumulating more of a lead than he already had. I wanted to put a little pressure on the short stacks, especially the larger of the two, but I didn’t want to stick my neck out too far. So when the shorter of the two, in the SB, open limped my BB, I checked rather than risk shoving my Ks 3h into his trap. The flop was Jd 9d 8h, and he checked. Stacks were such that he’d be in good shape to check-raise me with any pair or any draw, so I just checked behind.
Turn Qd, putting three to a flush and four to a straight on the board. He checked again. It was hard to imagine he was too strong, so I bet 2800 into a 4800 pot. Unfortunately, he called.
River Js, and he checks again. With his passive flop and turn play, there’s just no way he way he can have better than two pair unless he rivered a full house. I’m supposed to be pressuring him, right? He had 14,555 in his stack, and there was 10,390 in the pot. I bet 10K, and he folded.
Next interesting pot, still similar stack sizes, the action folds to me with JJ in the SB. I didn’t want a big confrontation with the chipleader, so I was looking to win a medium-sized pot pre-flop, but he wasn’t the sort to reraise. The last time I open limped from the SB, though, he had made an absurd raise to 12K, so I limped, hoping to limp-raise and just take it down pre rather than play a bloated pot out of postion. He checked behind.
Flop 863r, and I lead 2800 into 4800 pot. He raises to 10,500 hmmm. We’re playing a limped pot 50 BB deep at the final table, so I’m not looking to broke on an overpair. I just call the raise.
Turn 2 to put a club draw on the board. I check, and he checks behind. Very good, two pair is unlikely.
River 2, now that is a nice card. I bet 20K into the 26K pot, and he calls with J6. There’s a new chipleader in town!
One of the shorties sucks out on the other big stack to make them both medium, and I bust the other shorty, so three-handed I was in a great spot, with the other two close in chips and me having more than both of them put together. I was planning to pour on the aggression, and reraised AKs almost immediately. I got flat called, which can be scary, but this particular guy was going to play fit or fold on the flop. I shoved a Q93 board and got him off it.
Two hands he later he open shoved 11BB’s from the SB, I called with ATs in my BB. He had KT but caught on the river grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!! Two hands after that, he busted the other guy QQ>A7, and we went into heads up with me holding 140K and him 110K, blinds 1200/2400.
He was pretty bad at heads up play, mostly just way too tight passive pre-flop. I was raising 90% from the button and calling like 75% of his raises from my BB since they were very small. He also folded a ton to continuation bets, which made all my raising that much more profitable. Eventually he started reraising me, which is fine because this sort of player isn’t good at deciding when and with what to make pre-flop reraises, but I did have to slow down a little.
I lost some chips fastplaying a nut flush draw that didn’t get there, then got them back just calling down his stupid little underbets with a flush draw that did get there. That put me back at a 2:1 lead, when the following hand occurred.
I raised a little less than 3x with Kh 4h on the button, and he called. Flop Jd 4d 3c, and he potted into me. Very strange. I’d been betting every flop, so I didn’t think he’d play a monster this way, but he also hadn’t been very bluffy. I called, planning to evaluate the turn.
Turn brought the Tc, and he shoved 63K at a 48K pot. This was about half of my remaining chips. I was pretty lost, he felt strong, but I couldn’t rationalize a fold with so many draws out there and his strange line. I called, he showed me J9.
RIVER 4 OH THAT’S TOO BAD I OWED YOU ONE SHIP IT SHIP IT SHIP IT!!!!
For what it’s worth, I am more inclined to call with K4 than I would be with something like J2, since I’ve got much better equity against his range, particularly when he has middle pair (I dominate him) or top pair (I’m live rather than dominated). Whatever, I’m a donkey, but I’m a donkey with $2800. Except that it’s Saturday, and I ran bad in the $300 tournaments and some other stuff, so about half of those winnings went to cover other buy-ins. Still a good couple of hours, though.