Posts Tagged ‘poker tournament’

The table started out pretty soft, with only two players I recognized at the table. Unfortunately, Jon “fatalerror” Aguiar and Bill Chen were on my immediate left. Bill didn’t get involved in too many pots, but Jon sure did.

Early on, I raised 55 on my CO and called a 3-bet from a fishy player in the BB. I made a questionable call on a 932 flop, then turned a 5 to stack his KK.

The table kept getting tougher, with Amnon Fillippi and a few other solid players (but also Dennis Phillips) filling empty seats. A tight-bad player open limped for 300, I made it 1300 with QQ, Jon called, and Amnon shoved 15K from the Button. I reshoved without much thought but ran into AA.  Read the complete post...

My tournaments results have been pretty good the last few months, culminating most recently in two PCA seats and a win in the FTP $300 Saturday 6-Max. I attribute this improvement to a disciplined effort to avoid bringing the aggressive play needed to win in high-stakes cash games over to a tournament setting where my opponents are far more passive and far less tricky.

Last night, in the $300 rebuy FTOPS event, I was rolling along nicely and then fell off the wagon:

Full Tilt No-Limit Hold’em Tournament, 170/340 Blinds 25 Ante (6 handed) - Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

BB (t13511)
UTG (t19356)
MP (t20140)
CO (t18855)
Button (t12236)
Hero (SB) (t19919)
Hero’s M: 30.18

Preflop: Hero is SB with 8, K
4 folds, Hero bets t1020, BB calls t680

Flop: (t2190) 9, 2, 7 (2 players)
Hero bets t1333, BB raises to t3125, Hero raises to t18874 (All-In), BB calls t9341 (All-In)  Read the complete post...

I’ve been spending most of my time these last few weeks camping, most recently at an amazing site in Arches National Park, and emerging only occasionally to play poker and catch up with the outside world. Annoyingly, this means I’m often at the mercy of either a hotel internet connection or my Aircard, neither of which provides quite as good of an internet connection as one would like when one is playing poker for thousands of dollars. So today the Poker Stars lobby was running at a crawl and I was trying to register for some tournaments while playing other games at the same time. I selected the $200 Sunday Million and clicked OK… or so I thought.

Half an hour earlier than I was expecting, a window popped up with my table. “Welcome to the $2000+$100 single table PCA satellite” it read, or something to that effect. Whoops.  Read the complete post...

What is it with me losing three-way pre-flop all ins with Aces on the bubble of the final table of big Full Tilt tournaments? This is with 20 people left in the $300 6-max Saturday tournament.

Full Tilt No-Limit Hold’em Tournament, 1000/2000 Blinds 250 Ante (5 handed) - Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

MP (t85806)
Button (t128054)
SB (t45228)
BB (t72671)
Hero (UTG) (t120318)

Hero’s M: 28.31

Preflop: Hero is UTG with A, A
Hero bets t4888, MP calls t4888, 1 fold, SB raises to t44978 (All-In), 1 fold, Hero raises to t85068, MP raises to t85556 (All-In), Hero calls t488

Flop: (t219340) Q, 6, K (3 players, 2 all-in)

Turn: (t219340) 4 (3 players, 2 all-in)

River: (t219340) 8 (3 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: t219340
Results:
SB had J, Q (flush, King high).
Hero had A, A (one pair, Aces).
MP had Q, Q (three of a kind, Queens).
Outcome: SB won t138184, MP won t81156  Read the complete post...

“Super Satellite
Buy-In: $665.00/$35.00 USD
585 players
Total Prize Pool: $389025.00 USD
Target Tournament #201001051 Buy-In: $14130.00 USD
25 tickets to the target tournament

Tournament started 2009/11/01 18:00:00 ET

Dear foucault82,

Congratulations - You have won a package for the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) 2010 Main Event. The PCA is at the Atlantis Resort and Casino on Paradise Island in the Bahamas! You’ll be checking in at the Atlantis on Monday, January 4, 2010, and checking out on Tuesday, January 12. Your hotel reservation covers you and one guest.”

I go back and forth on whether it’s even worth playing the satellites for these big buy-in international tournaments. By the time you pay travel expenses, currency exchange vig, etc., the tournaments aren’t generally such a hot investment. Not to mention the variance that comes with playing these things on my own money.  Read the complete post...

This hand from the 2+2 high-stakes multi-table tournament forum got me thinking about what it means to be “at the top” of a polarized range. Here’s a quick summary, for those who can’t/won’t follow the link:

It’s a tournament, and blinds are 100/200. Hero raises to 475 UTG with KK, and good loose aggressive regular calls out of the SB. The flop comes Qd 4s 9d. SB checks, Hero bets 625, Villain calls.

The turn is the 4d, pairing the board and putting three diamonds out.  Both players check. (I don’t think it matters much, because the turn decision isn’t the important thing here, but Hero has the Kd.)

The river is the 4h, giving Hero Kings full of Fours. Villain checks, Hero bets 1400 into a 2300 pot, and Villain shoves for 11080. Hero has him covered.  Read the complete post...

How not to play in the Sunday Million:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, $200+$15 Tournament, 25/50 Blinds (9 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

CO (t9600)
Button (t10700)
Hero (SB) (t9850)
BB (t10000)
UTG (t10000)
UTG+1 (t10000)
MP1 (t10000)
MP2 (t9850)
MP3 (t10000)

Hero’s M: 131.33

Preflop: Hero is SB with 8, 7
4 folds, MP3 bets t150, CO calls t150, 1 fold, Hero calls t125, 1 fold

Flop: (t500) K, 5, 4 (3 players)
Hero checks, MP3 checks, CO bets t300, Hero raises to t1200, 1 fold, CO calls t900

Turn: (t2900) A (2 players)
Hero bets t1500, CO calls t1500

River: (t5900) Q (2 players)
Hero bets t7000 (All-In), CO calls t6750 (All-In)

Total pot: t19400

Results:
Hero had 8, 7 (high card, Ace).
CO had 10, A (one pair, Aces).
Outcome: CO won t19400  Read the complete post...

Wicked Chops Poker is reporting that, with 2400 players left in the main event, Phil Ivey accepted a $20K wager from Andy Bloch at 99:1 that he would win the main event. Now that he’s made the final table, Bloch’s got to be sweating the $2 million loss.

My first reaction was that, this close call notwithstanding, this was a pretty good spot for Bloch. Granted everything I’ve heard about Ivey is that he’s both incredibly good at poker and insanely intimidating in person, but is he really 24 times more likely than the average player to take it down? The one thing I don’t know, which would make a big difference, is what his chip stack was like at the time. I guess if he was already at like three times the average when he took the bet, it might not be so unreasonable to think he’d close out eight times as often as anyone else sitting on a stack that big.  Read the complete post...