Archive for August, 2008

My first table was pretty unremarkable except for Erick Lindgren a few seats to my right. He was playing a kind of loose and passive style, but he was making it work for him. After I got myself knocked out in 4th (at that first table), he had more than half of the chips in play 3-handed.

An example of what I mean but loose and passive but not necessarily bad (since I am just a random in his eyes):

Full Tilt Poker, NL Hold’em Tournament, 40/80 Blinds, 7 Players
LeggoPoker.com – Hand History Converter

CO: 2,340
BTN: 2,625
Lindgren: 7,415
BB: 6,030
Hero (UTG): 2,025
UTG+1: 1,505
MP: 2,060

Pre-Flop: (120) Q Q dealt to Hero (UTG)
Hero raises to 225, 4 folds, Lindgren calls 185, BB calls 145

Flop: (675) A 4 8 (3 Players)
Lindgren checks, BB bets 320, Hero calls 320, Lindgren calls 320

Turn: (1,635) 2 (3 Players)
Lindgren checks, BB checks, Hero checks

River: (1,635) 2 (3 Players)
Lindgren checks, BB checks, Hero checks

Results: 1,635 Pot
Lindgren showed A J (two pair, Aces and Twos) and WON 1,635 (+1,090 NET)
BB showed 6 8 (two pair, Eights and Twos) and LOST (-545 NET)
Hero showed Q Q (two pair, Queens and Twos) and LOST (-545 NET)  Read the complete post...

I was too inconsiderate to order your gift well in advance and too cheap to get expedited shipping, so it may not arrive tomorrow. But it will be there soon. In the meantime, here are photos from Bryce and Zion Canyons. For everyone who wasn’t there, I’ve included the occasional caption. I couldn’t recommend these two parks highly enough- some of the most beautiful places I’ve been. Way better than the Grand Canyon, in my opinion, which is remarkable only because it is big. My father, my brother, and I spent a few days out there between Day 1 and Day 2 of the WSOP.

This one is known as the sinking ship.

You can only see one of them but there were actually three of these little bridges crossing this narrow canyon.

This one looks a lot like a priest, if you zoom in.

My brother and me (unshaven and with hat hair).

My father, who commandeered the straw hat Poker Stars gave me. It definitely looked better on him.

Petrified rock.

Dad playing with his hand-held video camera.

Once again I had some rough table draws, ending up with a lot of high-stakes cash players. As I previously explained, this is bad in an FTOPS tournament for a number of reasons. One of them took me to valuetown on the first hand of the tournament:

Full Tilt Poker, NL Hold’em Tournament, 15/30 Blinds, 5 Players
LeggoPoker.com – Hand History Converter

SB: 1,500
BB: 3,000
Hero (UTG): 3,000
CO: 3,000
BTN: 3,000

Pre-Flop: (45) 9 9 dealt to Hero (UTG)
Hero raises to 90, CO folds, BTN raises to 315, 2 folds, Hero calls 225

Flop: (675) 8 T Q (2 Players)
Hero checks, BTN checks

Turn: (675) 4 (2 Players)
Hero checks, BTN bets 450, Hero calls 450

River: (1,575) Q (2 Players)
Hero checks, BTN bets 1,250, Hero calls 1,250

Results: 4,075 Pot
Hero mucked 9 9 (two pair, Queens and Nines) and LOST (-2,015 NET)
BTN showed A T (two pair, Queens and Tens) and WON 4,075 (+2,060 NET)

I got him back a bit by stealing this pot from him:

Full Tilt Poker, NL Hold’em Tournament, 15/30 Blinds, 5 Players
LeggoPoker.com – Hand History Converter

BTN: 2,835
SB: 3,150
Hero (BB): 3,065
UTG: 2,845
CO: 4,605

Pre-Flop: (45) 7 5 dealt to Hero (BB)
UTG calls 30, CO raises to 135, BTN folds, SB calls 120, Hero calls 105, UTG calls 105  Read the complete post...

This ran simultaneously with the HORSE, and I didn’t even realize it was scheduled. I think turbo tournaments are stupid, but it was an FTOPS, I was already playing, and it as going to require close to 0% of my attention, so I played. Thankfully, it was over quick, as turbos should be. I ran JJ into QQ for most of my chips, then doubled with AA vs. KK, then got bad beat on a 3-way all in with JJ losing to KT, then shoved K5 from the SB into K8 or something like that. Whatever.

Apparently the same person won both Event 14 and Event 15. Some guy called yuvee04 who won an FTOPS event in a previous series as well. As far as I know, he’s not a tournament regular or anything. And I haven’t heard of any allegations of cheating. Sounds like he’s just on the heater of a lifetime.

I wanted to make this post about how bad people are at Stud/8, because they are. Split pot games will rip clueless players to shreds. O/8 is a pretty easy game to get, so you don’t see quite as many huge mistakes. Plus there are fewer betting streets and it’s easier to make the nuts. But in Stud/8, people chase absurd lows and call down with any pair even when they are clearly crushed or getting freerolled.

But I also made a pretty big error in a Stud/8 game, so I guess I’ll be talking about how I suck at Stud/8 (though this is really just a Stud high error). On the river, my opponent was showing 6655, and I had Aces up with both Aces and two high cards showing. My opponent bet, and I raised for value. Like I was saying, no matter how clear I make it that I have Aces up, people will call down with any two pair.

I forgot, however, to think about what my opponent would be value betting. Since his two pair was open, there was no way he could be betting on the strength of that alone. He had to have either a boat or a low, and in either case there was no value in a raise. Sure enough, he had 6′s full.  Read the complete post...

I knew Monday night’s FTOPS was a 1K NLHE, but I was pleasantly surprised when I was “seated” to find only five other players at my table. I had no idea it was a 6-max! I was less pleasantly surprised to find two other regulars in the FTP 10/20 games at my table. Dammit, I play tournaments because I want to play with fish! Not only were these guys ten times better than the average player in the tournament, but I knew they were also going to be much more aggressive when stacks were deep. That meant I would have to play high variance poker, which I’d much prefer to avoid in such a well-structured event.

Thankfully, my table broke pretty quickly and I was moved to a softer one. This time, I got to be the undisputed aggressor. For a while, I was getting no respect:

Full Tilt Poker, NL Hold’em Tournament, 20/40 Blinds, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com – Hand History Converter

UTG: 8,010
Hero (MP): 6,890
CO: 7,410
BTN: 7,380
SB: 4,930
BB: 4,130

Pre-Flop: (60) J A dealt to Hero (MP)
UTG folds, Hero raises to 120, CO calls 120, BTN calls 120, SB folds, BB raises to 520, Hero raises to 1,240, 2 folds, BB raises to 4,130 and is All-In, Hero folds

Results: 2,740 Pot
BB mucked and WON 2,740 (+1,500 NET)  Read the complete post...

This event replaced the usual $200 FTP $750K Guarantee and had an appropriately weak field. I didn’t do anything special to chip up, aside from occasionally abusing the fish on my right. I did find check-folding Aces on the turn at one point:

Full Tilt Poker, NL Hold’em Tournament, 80/160 Blinds, 9 Players
LeggoPoker.com – Hand History Converter

BTN: 4,508
SB: 3,985
BB: 7,345
UTG: 4,061
Hero (UTG+1): 4,680
UTG+2: 1,799
MP1: 4,380
MP2: 6,069
CO: 5,942

Pre-Flop: (240) A A dealt to Hero (UTG+1)
UTG folds, Hero raises to 444, 2 folds, MP2 calls 444, 4 folds

Flop: (1,128) 6 7 T (2 Players)
Hero bets 736, MP2 calls 736

Turn: (2,600) 9 (2 Players)
Hero checks, MP2 bets 4,889 and is All-In, Hero folds

Results: 2,600 Pot
MP2 mucked and WON 2,600 (+1,420 NET)

I contemplated check-raising the flop. Maybe this is results oriented, but I definitely wish I had. Then again, I probably would have gotten it in good and lost on a suckout.

Eventually, of course, that did happen. My Queens lost to A4, then I got Queens again and shoved 11BB UTG and mig.com on my immediate left (yeah I wasn’t running good at table draws either) cold called. He had AKs, but I lost the flip.