Another Good Night

I usually have poker night with friends on Wednesday, but as they left for Vegas yesterday (I’m leaving tonight to meet them out there), it was cancelled, giving me a rare opportunity to play the Stars Wednesday $150K guarantee.

Since I was playing that, I signed up for a whole host of other evening tournaments as well, including the Stars 7PM $100, a WSOP double shoot-out, and a $20 rebuy six-max tournament on Ultimate Bet that I didn’t even know they had. It turns out that Stars had had problems with their server up until very recently, so at first it looked like there would be a lot of overlay in the shoot-out, but they ended up cancelling it.

The $100 was a small but tough field with a lot of regulars. I played a solid game up until the final table, where I ran ridiculously well. I caught a lot of flak for one play I made, though after discussing it with some other good players I’m still confident it was a good decision. The only player whose name I recognized at the final table was kwob20, who is ranked as one of the best tournament players on the internet on Pocket Fives.

Kwob was a short stack but seemed to have a very good understanding of when he should be shoving all in (ie a lot, especially since the table was playing pretty tight). With about 7 players left, he shoved from the button with roughly 6 BB’s left in his stack. If he understands solid pushbot strategy, and it seemed to me that he did, then he should have pretty much any two cards either. So, I moved all in with K6s from the SB, risking about half of my stack. He showed ATo, which is much better than I expected to see, but I caught my K to eliminate him anyway.

He made some snide comments, and some friends of his who were watching called me a donkey, etc. This guy’s results are good enough that I’ve thought over the play, but I still think that especially given the bad structure on Stars and the fact that I was at the bottom of the pack anyway, I should be looking for any +EV spot I can. It surprises me that a top player can look at this situation and see nothing more than “OMG half your chips with K6?!?!?!”

I eventually got it heads up, losing half most of my stack when I three-bet a flush draw on a K-high flop in a limped pot and ran into AK. A few hands later I got it all in with KJ and lost to K8, but I really can’t complain after my K6 and a few other key suckouts I had at the final table.

Only 24 players entered the UB $20 rebuy, but they were all pretty bad, and I won that one without much difficulty. Many of them did not rebuy initially and elected to make only one or no add ons (UB allows up to two).

The whole night, even when I was playing more tables than I usually do (seven at once, at one point), I was “in the zone” and felt like I was playing very well and staying focused. I made the money in the $300 but then lost 99<66>

There was one interesting hand from this tournament worth discussing. We were on the bubble, with about 97 players left and 90 to be paid. In general the bubble’s been a little tough to abuse recently because more people seem to realize it is dumb to focus too much on making the money, but in these higher buy-in tournaments where you get a lot of satellite qualifiers, you still see some weak tight plays.

With blind 300/600, I had a 6K stack, meaning I had a little breathing room but not much. Most of the time with this stack I’m either looking to open shove or fold, unless I get a monster hand, in which case I can get involved in a raised pot. In general, though, I don’t ever expect anyone to raise and then fold to my all in.

However, a spot arose where the player in the BB had only 2400 chips. I didn’t know whether or not he’d be looking to fold into the money, but there were some very short stacks at other tables, so it was reasonable to think he would fold sometimes in that situation. UTG+1 was a guy with a medium-sized stack who seemed to open pretty aggressively from early position. Generally he came in with a small raise in the neighborhood of 2.5x the BB, but sometimes he would raise 3x. I tentatively assumed that the 3x raises were stronger.

UTG+1 raised to 1500, and I decided to raise all in with my 98o from CO-1. This is very thin, both because the BB will likely call a very wide range (though that isn’t a disaster provided UTG+1 folds, as there will be plenty of dead money in the pot such that I’ll be getting appropriate pot odds), and because UTG+1 will call a fair amount as well. However, since he raised so small, I was able to shove for 4x his bet, so I figured he would fold sometimes. Most importantly, I wanted a chance to get solidly up over 10 BB so that I’d get up enough chips to have reraise fold equity against a standard raise.

The BB tanked and finally called with K7o, which was a good play by him I think, though certainly some percentage of players in this tournament would have folded that in his spot (I would have, unless I had a good read on the guy moving all in ahead of me). UTG+1 folded, and I caught my 9 to win the pot.

As I mentioned, I’m leaving for Vegas tonight, so I may not update for a few days, but I will have a trip report when I get back early next week.