Players were matched with our Round 5 opponents last night, so I had the chance to google my adversary. He looked to be a Pocket Fives guy who used to play some big MTT’s like the daily 100r and such but lately had been playing a lot $16 hyper-turbo sit and go’s. I went to bed expecting to face a tourney donk in the morning.
This match actually proved the toughest of the tournament. He had the momentum for the whole first hour, and I felt like I just couldn’t make anything happen. He always had cards or failed to have cards at just the right times. He c-bet 90% of the time, but he had middle pair when I check-raise bluffed him. When I check-raised him for value, he folded.
There’s definitely an element of luck in circumstances like that, but after enough impeccable timing you have to wonder if you aren’t getting outplayed. It’s not as though every hand went to showdown. There were plenty of spots where he 4-bet my light 3-bets and folded to my strong hands, where he double-barreled when I flop calls were weak and checked it down when they were strong. Maybe he just had the cards every time, but that gets less and less likely the more it happens. It’s also extremely mentally taxing, because you feel like you are just getting beaten down constantly. Here’s a good example where he had exactly the right hand to combat the bluff I attempted:
PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 530 Tournament, 50/100 Blinds (2 handed) – Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com
Hero (BB) (t6006)
SB (t8994)
Hero’s M: 40.04
Preflop: Hero is BB with 8
, 7
SB bets t250, Hero calls t150
Flop: (t500) 6
, 4
, 3 (2 players)
Hero bets t333, SB calls t333
Turn: (t1166) 10 (2 players)
Hero bets t789, SB calls t789
River: (t2744) Q (2 players)
Hero checks, SB checks
Total pot: t2744
Results:
SB had A, 6 (one pair, sixes).
Hero had 8, 7 (high card, Queen).
Outcome: SB won t2744
Every time we got the money in, I had very slightly the best of it, but he always had plenty of equity, and I was lucky to survive all 3. I had QT vs. his KQ on a QT9 flop in a 3-bet pot, 99 vs. his ATs all-in preflop, and 99 vs. his A5 with a backdoor flush draw on a 632 flop in a 3-bet pot. That last one occurred just at the end of the hour, so I went into break dead even in chips and with renewed hope. We were starting fresh, and hopefully I’d learned more about him in the first hour than he had about me.
It was either that or I started catching cards, but the momentum swung back my way in the second hour. I got a lot of value out of AT vs. K9 on A9x board in a 3-bet pot, and I bluffed him out once in a 3-bet pot. After that he was super short, and I finished him off with JJ vs. K7.
Round 6 was a disaster. My opponent was probably the weakest I’d faced all tournament. For a while he was really loose weak, just losing a lot of medium-sized pots and never winning anything substantial from me. I ground him down to the point where I had a 6-1 chip lead and went on break confident that I’d dust him off tidily when we returned.
Instead, he started doing the best thing the weaker player can do in a heads up match, which is play very aggressively pre-flop and leverage my unwillingness to play big pots. I got it in pre-flop in a really marginal spot with 7’s against what turned out to be 9’s. This was probably a +cEV play but may have been a mistake just because I didn’t need to gamble with this guy. What really hurt was getting it in with a set of 7’s vs. his K’s a few hands later and having him river a K.
After that I was short and I probably didn’t gamble as much as I should have. I got ground down a bit, pushed out of a lot small pots, and eventually got it in AJs vs KJo to double. Even that didn’t leave me in very good shape, and soon it was more of the same. It seemed like he was shoving over every raise I made except when I had AK, AQs, and 99. Finally I made what may have been a tilty resteal with K8o and lost to 99. Pretty frustrating to bust in 21st when I felt I had such a big edge on my opponent, but there are plenty more tournaments to be played today!