Some Big Bold Tournament Bluffs

I’d never played the $1000 FTP Money Monday until last night, but at the time, it just felt right. I’m an early-to-bed, early-to-rise kind of guy, and I often start getting tired around 9PM. Last night, however, I felt awake and alert, so I decided to give this tournament a shot. July has done great things for my bankroll, and a $1000 tournament is now very practical for me.

Having made this sober decision, I quickly proceeded to try to bluff all my entire stack on the first hand by running a squeeze play against an UTG raiser and then double barrelling a known calling station (I had a note). Observe:

*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Hero [Ac Jh]
GetPWN3D raises to 70
Bigsleeve folds
tiltskuja folds
Rojotito folds
JOEYTHEB folds
RandomDonk calls 70
Phd J calls 70
Clonie Gowen calls 60
Hero raises to 400
GetPWN3D folds
RandomDonk folds
Phd J calls 330
Clonie Gowen folds

*** FLOP *** [5d Qc 8s]
Hero bets 600
Phd J calls 600

*** TURN *** [5d Qc 8s] [Kd]
Hero bets 2,000, and is all in
Phd J folds

The UTG raiser was BelowAbove, a very successful tournament player. He’s also very aggressive, which made me think that even UTG he could have a fairly wide range. Even if he thinks I’m up to no good, however, I really can’t see him continuing against such a large re-raise without AK or QQ+.

I get a call from the calling station, which isn’t that much of a problem, because I’ve still got a very playable hand, and unlike when I’m called by a better player, here I am not particularly concerned about only getting action when I’m beat.

The flop misses me, but it’s ideal for a continuation bet. Calling station does what he does best.

It’s a common misconception that you can’t bluff calling stations. The truth is that if you fire enough barrels, bluffing them can actually be quite profitable. Because they are playing too many hands on early streets, they are often too weak to call big bets on later streets. So far, i think Villain’s play is very consistent with something like 99. He just doesn’t want to let it go, so he keeps calling, but if you apply enough pressure, you can convince him to go away. At least in $1000 tournaments, even the donkeys don’t want to bust on the first hand by calling off 150 BB’s against the pre-flop reraiser with an underpair to the board.

Also I turned a gut shot.

Along with some 5/10 tables, I was also playing the Poker Stars $150 100K guarantee. I got off to a really amazing start and was among the top ten players with about 250 remaining when I was moved to a new table with another big stack. The player’s name, Ayodeji, looked familiar to me, but I couldn’t figure out why. He wasn’t a tournament regular, I didn’t know him from 2+2, but still I felt like I should know the name.

I’ve been doing a ton of research on Africa the last few weeks, as that is the debate topic for the upcoming season, so I decided that maybe it was a common name I’d come across in something I’d read. Anyway, Ayodeji was very aggressive, and that frustrated me, because I wanted to be table captain. So I tried to put him in his place:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em Tourney, Big Blind is t400 (9 handed) Hand History converter Courtesy of PokerZion.com

SB (t2830)
Hero (t22003)
UTG (t11965)
UTG+1 (t3910)
MP1 (t5920)
MP2 (t4470)
MP3 (t18985)
CO (t7240)
Button (t10507)

Preflop: Hero is BB with 5h, 6h.
4 folds, MP3 raises to t1200, 3 folds, Hero raises to t3483, MP3 calls t2283.

Flop: (t7106) Ad, 2s, 7c (2 players)
Hero bets t4500, MP3 calls t4500.

Turn: (t16106) 6c (2 players)
Hero bets t14000 (All-In), MP3 calls t10982 (All-In).

River: (t41088) 9s (2 players, 2 all-in)

Final Pot: t41088

He showed AQ to double through me. So much for the “I turned a pair, I’m all in!” theorem. My thinking at the time was that a lot of players will shove their stronger Ax hands against a reraise, even when in position, rather than calling and risk missing the flop (which isn’t to say that a call is bad, in fact I like the way Ayodeji played the hand). They’ll also fold the weaker ones, maybe taking a flop if they are suited. So I felt like on the turn I could get a fold out of a weak Ace or a pair that was trying to trap and then too stubborn to give up to a continuation bet even though an Ace flopped. Just to emphasize how large this pot was, the average stack was probably around 10K at this point.

Anyway, after the hand, Ayodeji typed, “R- O- C!” and immediately I realized why I recognized him. He left a comment on here a while back in response to my WSOP Main Event Day 3 report saying that he enjoyed the reports and especially liked my references to Jay-Z’s “Takeover.” Not that it required any ‘insider knowledge’ to make this call, but if I knew that he was familiar with my playing style and knew how aggressive I’m capable of being, especially when my table dominance is threatened, I would not have pulled something like this against him. Oh well, it’s entirely my fault for not recognizing him, because he plays under the same name that he used to leave his comment.

Ayodeji, if you are reading this, please explain how you managed to finish 90th after I gave you all those chips!!!! I hope you didn’t blow up, too. I saw that JabbatheFlop, who sucked out (kinda) to eliminate me but generally seemed to be pretty bad, had a high finish. Maybe he sucked out on you too? Good playing with you, man, from what I saw you seemed to be playing very well.

Oh yeah I made like six buyins at 5/10 while I was donking it up in the tournaments, so even though I ran into some bad spots in the Money Monday and didn’t cash, I still finished up pretty substantially for the night.