Posts Tagged ‘bad beat’

Today is Sunday, but I won’t be playing the Sunday Million, because I’m currently in the United States.

For as long as I’ve had this blog, I’ve started every year with a series of posts about my poker-related goals and resolutions, and I’ve ended every year by assessing the progress I made towards them. I set goals for 2011- my most ambitious ever, actually- but now it seems pointless to even look at them, as Black Fridayrendered them more or less irrelevant.  The best laid plans of mice and men, eh?

A dark omen in Montreal.

I’m not really in a place to start setting poker goals for this year, either, since I have no idea what the year will look like for me, poker-wise or otherwise. Not since my final semester of college have I felt this level of anxiety and uncertainty about my future. Those Big Questions are back: Where will I live? What will I do? Who will the people around me be?

I’ve spent the last week and and a half fending off questions, some idle and some concerned, at various gatherings of friends and family. My recent life as a nomadic poker professional was strange enough to them that they’ve learned to accept without alarm the fact that I don’t know where I’m going to be two weeks from now.  Read the complete post...

I once final tabled a small-field, small buy-in PLO8 tournament at the PCA, but otherwise the final two tables was the closest I’d ever made it to a live final table. It was exciting to keep seeing (some of) the same people day after day, and to feel the envy of those who did not make it through.

Norm was the first to go. I heard him walking behind my seat on the way to the payout station, muttering about “Ace-Queen against Ace-King”, and that was the last I saw of him. We actually lost three more players in the first half hour, one of whom I eliminated with A4s > KQo.

There were more players than I realized still in the tournament with whom I had no experience. To my left was “Scott”, a hometown hero from Chilliwack with an Irish accent and an inexplicably large cheering section, all of whom were wearing matching “It Could Happen” jackets and shouting loudly whenever he won a pot. Scott eliminated one of the other early departures and was pretty obnoxious about it, getting nervous and calling for cards even as an overwhelming favorite and then celebrating vigorously when his hand held up.  Read the complete post...

A nice fall day in Kits

Such a great day! Where to begin? My day actually started around 9:30. Emily was sick and needed some things from the grocery store, so I biked over to the Whole Foods (I told you we’re in the yuppy district!) before leaving for the casino. It was a beautiful morning. The sun is slow to rise this time of year in Vancouver, so the day still had an early morning freshness to it. The sky was clear but the ground wet from the previous day’s rain, so everything sparkled. Our place is on top of a hill, so I could see down past the red and gold trees to downtown and to the mountains beyond.

The lovely ride and crisp air put me in a good mood, and after dropping off the groceries, I walked off smiling to the bus stop. It’s so nice being able to play a live poker tournament but still sleep in your own home and just take public transportation to and from work like any other commuter. I could see the bus approaching from a block away and so sprinted for it, very nearly falling on my face in the process. I really thought it was a sure thing that I was going down face-first, don’t know how I managed to keep my feet. I made it, though, and as I boarded the bus I thought, “Hope that’s the only time I run bad all day.”  Read the complete post...

I was happy with my table, and the day got off to a great start. I was one of the two biggest stacks, the other one of whom was a young Asian kid in yellow hoodie and designer sunglasses who looked like he could be good. He handled his chips well and raised in a lot of the right spots, but after watching him tank and agonize before calling a 3-bet shove with QTs getting better than 2:1, I decided he couldn’t be that great. He subsequently lost half of his stack with KK to AK, berated the other guy for 4-betting AK, and then tilted off the rest of his chips, so I didn’t have to worry about him.

I did more than my part to bust out the short stacks, waking up with AQ in my big blind when someone shoved KQ and then with QQ when an even shorter stack 3-bet shoved TT. I shot up from 50K to 90K and took the liberty of opening a few more pots. At 300/600/50, I opened to 1300 with T8s and the BB defended. He quickly bet out at an A94 flop, but I called him with nothing but my backdoor draw and he check-folded the turn. The next orbit I raised him again with QTs. He quickly shoved 6600, and I did some quick math to determine that it was close but I had enough chips to establish a “don’t shove on me” image. I called and was pleasantly surprised to see his Q3s, which did not get there.  Read the complete post...

Edit: Fixed the flop in the Vanessa Rousso hand, I didn´t river a full house obviously.

Busted third to last hand of the night, been going back and forth a lot for the last half hour about whether I like my call, but we´ll get to that in a second. Table draw was OK but my seat was rough, had the only two truly good players at the table both on my immediate left. One of them busted the other, which I was happy about until that seat was filled by Scott Seiver. Even in position, that guy is tough to play against.

I played what I think was a very good TAG game for most of the day and hovered between 90-120% of the average. With about half an hour to go, my table broke and I moved to a much softer table which unfortunately was next on the break order.

Third table was tougher than the second but softer than the first, though again my seat wasn´t great. To my left was a kid who exuded competence and was sitting on more than twice the average. I could tell from the way the table was responding to him and talking about him that he´d been very difficult to play against.  Read the complete post...

Sorry for the lack of posts on here. It’s just that I’ve been playing so much poker that when I’m finished I don’t feel like spending another half-hour at the computer putting together a blog post.

Also I haven’t done anything of great interest in any of the recent WCOOPs. In fact, this is going to be a bit of a whine post. I’ve lost a lot of big pots with set under set and similar “cooler” situations. In most cases, though, I think there’s at least a case to be made that I could have played the hand differently and lost less, so hopefully it will be a little interesting to look at these. I’m actually less likely to make hero folds when I know I’ve been getting coolered a lot recently, because I start to trust my judgment less. I question whether I’m really beat or just seeing monsters under the bed.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 215 Tournament, 60/120 Blinds 25 Ante (9 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

MP2 (t6562)
MP3 (t18842)
CO (t9399)
Button (t1569)
SB (t4358)
BB (t5425)
UTG (t8312)
UTG+1 (t1171)
Hero (MP1) (t14061)

Hero’s M: 34.72

Preflop: Hero is MP1 with A♥, Q♥
2 folds, Hero bets t300, 1 fold, MP3 calls t300, 2 folds, SB calls t240, 1 fold  Read the complete post...

Round 1

My first opponent was a guy I didn’t recognize from China. Before cards were even dealt, he typed “lololol pro so cool”. Based on that alone, I predicted that he was going to give me no credit and try to outplay me.

Picking up JJ on the first hand was a dream come true. Blinds were 25/50, and he opened to 150. I made it 550, and he shoved for 7500.

This wasn’t precisely the result I wanted. I generally prefer not to play big pre-flop pots in these tournaments when I’m up against someone I expect to have an edge against, because in deep-stacked HU NLHE, edges can be very big. Based on his pre-flop chatter, I expected that he would be spazzing here a lot and dominating me rarely to never. It’s unfortunate that some of his spazzes are near-coinflips against me, but I’m on the right side of the coinflip, and even a 5% edge in a 300BB pot is pretty significant. He could also have some pairs that I dominate. So I called and won a flip against KQo to win the match on the first hand.

FWIW I probably would have folded AQ, not because I expected to be behind, but because I’d expect to find better spots.  Read the complete post...

The biggest news is that fellow PokerStars Team Online member and old-school MTT forum member Shane “Shaniac” Schleger won the 2-7 Triple Draw WCOOP yesterday! My excitement for him was tempered only slightly when I double-checked the terms of our staking arrangement and confirmed that I had 20% of him in all of the NLHE events but 0% in the other games. As some of you may know, he was a hair’s breadth away from final tabling the 6-Max Shootout last week, which was a tournament in which I did have an interest! Oh well, he’ll just have to run deep in yet another one.

Speaking of running deep, I had two solid WCOOP finishes today, 89/1253 in the $200 NLHE Rebuy and 13/1426 in the $109 8-Game. Almost everything I did in the NLHE event would qualify as a standard, and I busted on a bit of bad luck:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 215 Tournament, 1500/3000 Blinds 375 Ante (8 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

SB (t91766)
BB (t466222)
UTG (t63769)
UTG+1 (t100304)
Hero (MP1) (t72475)
MP2 (t121184)
CO (t45801)
Button (t121198)

Hero’s M: 9.66

Preflop: Hero is MP1 with 7, 7
2 folds, Hero bets t6000, 4 folds, BB calls t3000

Flop: (t16500) 3, 10, 10 (2 players)

BB checks, Hero bets t7777, BB calls t7777  Read the complete post...