Three Rivers Poker Challenge Day Two

Thanks for all the well wishes yesterday and especially to those who were following along on Twitter. That always makes a live run more fun. Despite starting the day with a below average stack, I made the final table and finished 7th for $6417. It was a bit of a grind, as I spent most of the day short-stacked and card dead, but it was entertaining and provided a lot of opportunities to practice live poker skills. Ultimately I think I played well but got a little too ego-invested in battling with a very active big stack who was on my left at the final table (yeah, writing it like that makes pretty clear what a bad idea that is).

You might enjoy looking at my tweets from yesterday, I met some characters. I don’t have time today, but I’ll try to write a bit more about specific hands later this week and maybe talk about them on a future podcast as well.

Here’s one quick brag: there’s an older guy on my right who’s been playing pretty quiet and nitty, though he’s clearly starting to get fed up by my bullying him on the final table bubble. He open completed the small blind, I raise 3x with K2o, and he calls. Flop AQ8 checks through. Turn 4 checks through again. River 8 he bets about two-thirds pot.

It doesn’t make a lot of sense but he also doesn’t seem like a guy who bluffs much and I do tend to look that sort up more than I should. One thing about nitty players is that they do tend to check pretty strong hands on early streets, especially if they think you’re aggressive. It’s a moral thing for them, I think. They want to punish me.

Anyway, while I’m pondering the call I count out calling chips and Villain does a really blatant thing where he acts like he’s eager to turn over the winning hand. It’s so straight-out-of-Caro that I actually wonder for a moment whether it could be a reverse tell. Then I decide I’m being silly and call. He shows nine-high and calls me a psychopath (good naturedly) when I show the winner.I’m turning into a proper live pro!