This is a guest post from a friend of mine who just won his first live tournament last week. It was a $125 freezeout at Aria. He sent this to me in an e-mail and was gracious enough to permit me to publish it. There’s some interesting stuff in here about what it takes to do well in a small-stakes live tournament, what you can get away with, and what it feels to be really keyed up and in the zone while you’re playing. I think everyone can relate to the feelings of frustration that come from banging your head against the wall in poorly structure tournaments and also the exhilaration of finally taking one down. Of course once you’re capable of calls like this it’s only a matter of time before you win one!
“I was able to build a good stack pretty early on, even before we hit the antes I had about 38k from a 10k stack. I was pretty aggressive and the table never gave me credit for anything. Because of this I was able to get paid when hitting a straight and hitting Aces up vs my opponent’s worst aces up.
So then comes this hand. I’m up against two late registrations. Both have about 10k and I have 38k. One kid who seems a bit aggro, I 3bet folded to his 4bet shove on the first hand he played so we certainly have an aggro dynamic there. The other one is a mid 40’s guy who seems uneasy at the sight of my stack.
The kid limps 200 and I isolate to 700 from the CO with A4hh. Mid 40’s guy calls from button and kid flats. Flop comes 624hh. Kid checks to me, I cbet to 1350 and mid 40’s guy calls. Kid check raises to 5k with 5k behind. I think shoving is the best option here, I have some fold equity vs the kid who probably saw this was a dry flop and could be check raising with hands that will fold to a shove. Even if he calls I have a lot of equity in the pot. Mid 40s guy calls and kid tank calls. the kid has 67o for top pair and the guy has 42cc. I hit an Ace on the turn and take a commanding chip lead and pretty much don’t lose it until the end of the tournament.
The following few hours are pretty quiet, I stay aggressive, opening A LOT on what is a pretty passive table and most people seem pretty unhappy to get involved with me. Only hand of notice is me opening KJo at 200/400/25 from MP and getting flatted by the SB. Flop comes 37Jr, I cbet to 1000 into a 1700 pot and get check/raised to 5k. Guy seems to know what he’s doing, been pretty quiet and has 20k behind. I think about folding but don’t like it too much so finally decide to shove after about a minute. I honestly couldn’t come up with a hand that he was repping and it was my 5th open in a row so I think he tries to make a lot of moves in that spot. He folded to the shove. I think folding is too nitty here and I don’t like calling because he’s going to shove a lot of turns which will make me fold so I figured that getting the money in on the flop was the right thing to do.
I get moved to a new table to completely abuse the kid on my left. The blinds are going up (400/800/75) and I have about 85k. We’re down to 18 players and everyone is playing tight. it often folds to me on the button and in the blinds and i’m pretty much raising every time without getting much resistance. BvB I pretty much raised 90% of the time and got away with it. After about an hour of this, this hand comes up, I have AJhh in the co and I open to 2500 at 600/1200/100, the kid 3bets me to 6k and it folds back to me. I think about folding but I’m getting some decent odds and decide to call. I think I have such a huge post flop edge on the guy that it makes sense. his range here is 88+, AJ+. Flop comes K89 one heart. I check and the kid bets 5k, about a third of the pot. Now, I don’t think he is trying to induce, I don’t believe he is good enough for that. I think for a couple minutes and try to decide if he would do this with a K. I have seen him bet a lot bigger when hitting top pair before and this bet just smells incredibly weak to me. PLUS I have all the backdoors in the world! 😉 He has 30k behind and I decide to shove. He tank folds JJ.
The things I take out of the tournament is that I was able to remain calm at all times. Even when getting around the 30bb mark, I didn’t panic and stayed composed and played my game. At one point, I went up 160k then back down to 90k, again I didn’t panic which isn’t so typical for me. I tend to get eaten away by the blinds coming up…etc… and getting distracted by that. And also it made realize that people just fold. I was able to steal the blinds so often that I kept opening and opening and opening. Since I wasn’t getting resistance I just kept up the aggression, when I was getting 3bet I would give it up often without tilting or anything.
Oh and also I won flips! 😉 that always feel good 😉
So yea, first live win. Certainly feels very good and hopefully breaks the curse of having only won online mtt’s so far!”