Archive for March, 2009

Edit: Important correction here. The non-bountied live pro I busted was not Bill Gazes but rather Bill Edler.

I decided to play the Bay 101 because of the combination of a nice location, great structure/tournament director (thanks Matt Savage!), and interesting people I thought it would attract, both because of the area and the number of pros who play as “shooting stars” with $5000 bounties on their heads.

At the outset, they distributed the bounties evenly, with one or two at every table in the 5 and/or 7 seats. I was fortunate to get probably the single softest bounty in the field at my table: 2007 WSOP main event champion Jerry Yang was seated to my immediate left. He was very quiet, but friendly enough. To my surprise, he made a lot of hopeless bluffs, especially in the early stages of the tournament. That’s not exactly how I expected him to play, which is maybe what he was going for. I called him down correctly once with 8s 4s on a Js 8h 3s Qd 3d board.  Read the complete post...

Day started with something like 136 players and 20,000 chips each. I spend most of the day in good shape, never amassing a huge stack but maintaining near or above the average. Then I made a big move on Joe Sebok on the very last hand of the night:

Daniel Alaei was on my immediate right, with Joe seated to his right. The two had been openly joking about how ridiculously tight a youngish Asian player across the table from us was. That player caught the big blind on the last hand of the night. Joe made a joke about going all in blind pre-flop to steal from him.

Blinds were 400/800/100, and Sebok open raised to 2200 with 30K behind. I thought that especially on the last hand of the night with a super tight player in the BB he could have almost anything here. Alaei called, and I was pretty sure that since he knew Sebok knew he knew the guy was tight, he didn’t have a huge hand and didn’t want to get into a pre-flop leveling war. He was just calling to use his position and knowledge of Joe’s wide range post-flop.  Read the complete post...

I’ve been alternately promising Emily a vacation and insisting that I haven’t had enough time for poker for months now. Finally, she offered the very appealing suggestion that we go to Northern California for the World Poker Tour event at the Bay 101 casino in San Jose. We’ve tacked on a few days to the end of the trip so that there’ll be vacationing no matter how the tournament goes, but having a few extra days in the Bay area isn’t a bad consolation prize if I don’t last long in the tournament.

We flew into Oakland Saturday night and had a minor adventure at the airport. Our hotel offered a free shuttle, but the Colgate Women’s Lacrosse team was already waiting for the shuttle when we got to the depot. It looked like the driver was going to need at least three trips to get all of them, and rather than waiting half an hour, we went to find a cab stand.

Along the way, a woman who seemed like a helpful airline employee (suspicious combination, I know, but in my defense I was tired) told us we could take a commercial shuttle for “about $5 each”. We waited a few minutes for the shuttle to arrive, and then a driver with a thick Indian accent started to pick up our bags and ask where we were going. He had clearly never heard of our hotel, which was practically walking distance from the airport, and started his price negotiation at $20.  Read the complete post...

Although this worked, I think it’s really awful play on my part. I am representing a ridiculously narrow range (like QQ and maybe KK) and even those don’t necessarily make sense. This guy was just frustrating me because he wasn’t folding to 3-bets ever and was just generally being a pain in the ass.

I knew he would float a continuation bet on this flop, so I was hoping that a delayed c-bet would get me more credit. When he bet the flop, I didn’t think he was all that strong, but calling with down with AJ unimproved didn’t quite feel right either. For what it’s worth, I think he usually 4-bets AK and KK pre-flop, and if he doesn’t 4-bet QQ, he probably doesn’t bet the flop either. When he just calls the turn, clubs are probably a non-trivial portion of his range. He tanked for a really long time before folding the river, though, so it seems like he did fold some kind of made hand.

Full Tilt No-Limit Hold’em, $20.00 BB (6 handed) – Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

CO ($3963)
Button ($6018)
Hero (SB) ($4937)
BB ($2357)
UTG ($2396)
MP ($2030)

Preflop: Hero is SB with A, J
3 folds, Button bets $50, Hero raises to $188, 1 fold, Button calls $138  Read the complete post...

OK, this has sparked a lot of interest among commenters, so I think I will offer a few of my own thoughts on the hand after all. In terms of what durrrr may have been thinking and why he was successful, I don’t have a lot to add to the very good analysis I already linked. Instead, I’ll focus on what I think Greenstein and Eastgate could have done differently.

(If you don’t know the details of the hand, Geoff recently shared a link to a YouTube clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SKwhb_nJVQ)

I’ll start with Eastgate, because my advice for him is easiest: fold pre-flop. By my count, the pot is $16,200 when it gets to Eastgate, who must call $2100 more with his 42o in the Small Blind. The 8:1 pot odds are nice, but he will be very deep out of position against 6-7 good to world-class players with a hand that virtually never makes the nuts or anything close to it. Even suited, this should probably be a fold, since with so many in the pot he’s looking at reverse implied odds even when he makes a flush. Post-flop, his play is fine, and this is just a spot where he’s going to lose money against a very good player. Hence why he should not be playing 24o.  Read the complete post...

I’m not much for watching televised poker, but from what I’ve seen, if you’re going to watch anything, High Stakes Poker is the show to watch. Although I didn’t see this hand go down, I heard it discussed quite a bit by Aaron “aejones” Jones and Rob “Bobbfitos” Eckstut on the latest 2+2 Pokercast. PokerNews commentator picks up on just about every complex detail that Aaron and Rob covered on the show, so I don’t have much to add to his commentary. It’s just a fascinating hand that shows how a total sicko like Dwan can run circles around event world-class players like Barry Greenstein and Gabe Kaplan (who, from what I’ve heard of his commentary on the hand, didn’t seem to get that Dwan was turning his pair into a bluff). So I definitely recommend that you have a look at Daniel Skolovy’s recap and commentary:

“Now although even an amateur could read Barry’s hand, it takes a real pro to have the stones to bluff into seven people and continue on the turn.

durrrr is that pro and Barry should know that, and thus should know that when his hand is as faceup as it is, durrrr has the potential to recognize this and bluff him off of it.  Read the complete post...

When you get to about the 2/4 or 3/6 level, an important goal to set for yourself is to make it hell for your opponents to show down marginal hands against you when they are out of position. The deeper you get, the wider the definition of marginal becomes, and here the stars really aligned nicely for me. The Villain is an occasional short stacker, and although he had a bunch of money spread out across a few 10/20 tables tonight, I still felt that he’d be a little uncomfortable with the idea of a $17K pot:

Full Tilt No-Limit Hold’em, $20.00 BB (6 handed) – Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

BB ($6735)
UTG ($2000)
MP ($11444)
Hero (CO) ($8761)
Button ($3940)
SB ($6294)

Preflop: Hero is CO with 6, 9
1 fold, MP bets $70, Hero calls $70, 2 folds, BB calls $50

Flop: ($220) 10, 2, 8 (3 players)
BB checks, MP bets $160, Hero calls $160, 1 fold

Turn: ($540) Q (2 players)
MP bets $400, Hero raises to $1555, MP calls $1155

River: ($3650) 5 (2 players)
MP checks, Hero bets $2977, 1 fold

Total pot: $3650 | Rake: $3  Read the complete post...