I skipped Tuesday’s $200 O/8 event, but played the $300 rebuy 6-max last night. I started to the left of kwob20, who was playing like a complete monkey during the rebuy period, just shipping his stack in really bad spots. In one hand, he limped behind a limper, I potted it with Ace-8, and they both called. I flopped the Ace on a pretty dry board with two hearts, and kwob check-raised pot. I was quite sure he had the flush draw, and called the raise.
The turn was a blank, and he just shoved for nearly twice the pot. Getting it in with a flush draw on the flop is one thing, but with one card to come and virtually no fold equity, it’s quite bad on the turn. He did indeed have the draw, which missed. I lost a few other pots, including calling one of kwob’s pre-flop shoves with 88 and losing to his Q6, and finished the rebuy period in for the minimum and up a modest 800 chips or so after being moved to another table.
At my new table was a pretty aggressive player named Nemoballer whom several people said was Daniel Alaei. I reraised him from the blinds once with AJ, but he 4-bet, and I folded. There weren’t a lot of interesting hands, mostly I chipped up just by stealing blinds or betting flops.
One of few moves I made all night was calling a CO raise with 4’s in the SB, then check-calling a KKJ flop, still thinking I was ahead of the better’s range. Unfortunately, the turn was a J, counterfeiting my pair. I checked, and he checked as well. I had a pot-sized bet left in my stack, so I decided to shove the river and represent the K. My opponent folded pretty quickly. I guess I could have just check-raised all in on the flop as well, but I like keeping my options open for later in the hand, and that probably gets called more often by bigger pairs.
I ended up maintaining a good sized stack for a few hours and then bubbling on a lost coin flip.
Much more heart-breaking was the Stars $300, where I got off to a great start winning a few coin flips and made some good plays as well. A particularly interesting hand came up against 2p2’er Nath:
Poker Stars
No Limit Holdem Tournament
Blinds: t100/t200
(Ante: t10)
9 players
Converter
Stack sizes:
Foucault: t11879
UTG+1: t8630
MP1: t8060
MP2: t5770
MP3: t3280
CO: t5570
Button: t22605
SB: t9195
BB: t15450
Pre-flop: (9 players) Foucault is UTG with :8c :tc
Foucault raises to t569, UTG+1 folds, MP1 calls t569 (pot was t959), 5 folds, BB calls t369 (pot was t1528).
Flop: :4h :7d :9d (t1897, 3 players)
BB checks, Foucault bets t1300, MP1 calls t1300 (pot was t3197), BB folds.
Turn: :2s (t4497, 2 players)
Foucault is all-in t10000, MP1 folds.
Uncalled bets: t10000 returned to Foucault.
Results:
Final pot: t4497
Pre-flop obviously is not standard but something I do occasionally to protect my big pairs. Because I’ve raised UTG, I play my draw very aggressively even against two callers. My goal, after all, is to represent an overpair, and I don’t want my opponents to be able to put me on exactly an overpair every time I raise UTG and then bet into two callers.
The turn is kind of a tricky spot, because Nath has a little over 6000 in his stack. Probably I should have just check-raised the flop (and should play my overpairs the same way) or bet more so that I’d have pot-sized bet left. But if I check, I think Nath is going to commit himself with any decent pair or draw, and I’ve still got an overcard to the board and an open-ender. The only problem with shoving to rep the overpair is that with Nath’s aggressive reputation (he’d already been caught in a big move once), I’m probably more likely to check the turn because I do want him to hang himself with a pair or draw. I was afraid he would realize that, but I still think that as played I needed to get the last bet in and hope for the best. He indicated that he made a pretty big laydown, which kind of surprised me.
Anyway, the tournament turned out to be a huge disappointment, as the guy on my right, who is a giant donkey who actually two outed me twice and then slow-played K’s to bust me in Saturday’s $300, busted me again last night on another horrible play. There was a raise to 1050, a call, the donkey overcalled. I considered just calling with AKs to give Nath or someone else a chance to squeeze, but then decided that they probably wouldn’t go with a super wide range since they’d have to expect someone to look them, so I just made it 5K myself. The action folded back around to my little buddy, who shoved 10K more with QT. I snap-called of course, but he floped AKJ, and I couldn’t resuck so instead got KO’ed in a pot that would have given me a 4x average stack. Blargh.
I’m unfortunately done with FTOPS now. The next two events are Stud and Limit Hold ‘Em, then this weekend there are some good events, but I’m going to be headed to Chicago to volunteer at another debate institute. I was up a bit thanks to my nice run in the $1000, but it was still a very disappointing series.