Thanks everybody, I'm so, so, so over the moon. I played yesterday and was really pleased. Previously I was fucking good at closing out tournaments when there was 30 people left, but this year I think some ego set in and I didn't hold back enough and played too loose in too many spots. Yesterday I went all the way through the gears. I played exceptionally tight and then for the last hour of the day let off the gas in some good spots and ended the day 1/16.
I couldn't sleep for hours. I was tired, my dogs were tired, but I just couldn't sleep, I was really excited. I've been a nearly man most of my poker career, 3 SCOOP final tables without victory, 2nd in WPT High Roller, 5th in WPT Main event, 20th in WCOOP main event, 15th in the $10k PLO, this year, 25th in a $1500. All of these times I had gotten super excited, perhaps too excited. Luckily this year I hired Elliot Roe to help me with the mental side of my game, back to this topic soon.
I woke up with around 4 hours of sleep in the bag and played with my dogs, said good bye and then headed back to my apartment.
My dog Kira
| Click to see full-size image. |
My grind set up
| Click to see full-size image. |
I went for some food with a friend and then had 2 hours, I could either sleep or I could go to the sauna/steam room/jacuzzi. I decided for the latter and stayed there for an hour or so and then got home and prepared. I opened my email and to my great surprised I had this:
final table MP3
Roe Elliot (elliotxxxxx@xxxxx) Add to contacts 12/09/2015 Keep this message at the top of your inbox
To:
patrick.leonard@hotmail.co.ukSubject: For when you crush souls tomorrow
GL mate!!!!
Online MTT Final Table.mp3
Roe Elliot shared from Dropbox
View on
www.dropbox.comI listened to it twice, and it got me really in the zone. This was the tournament I was going to stay in the zone, I was going to understand what everybody else was doing and I was going to readjust and react to everything. I wouldn't take any huge risks, but I was very confident in how my game plan had to be.
Fast forward 1 hour and I start great, I get up to 4.5m chips from my 3m before I lose pretty big pot.
I open the button, sb is 2/11 and 3bets me, I peel QTss. Flop AKQsxx, he bets, I call. Turn AKQT and he checks. I think this is a great spot to pot turn, jam river, but I went for the lower route and decided to check back. River AKQTA, he checks and I decide to try to get him to fold, he called A9 and I had my first set back. The words of Elliot echoed in my ear where previously I would have tried to get these chips back that I had lost.
Anyway we get to the final table and for around 3 hours (pre ft and whole ft) I'm super, super card dead. I chip down, my 3bets get jammed on, everything isn't going great, but I'm very, very composed, relaxed and prepared for this. This is exactly why I study 3x a week midweek for these exact spots.
Anyway, my opponents fall one by one until there is only me and RomeOpro left. He is a super, super good reg and I wanted to deal, but he wanted to get a 6 figure score and obviously I'm not giving anything up. We are typing in the chat box, I make a thin value bet/protection bet on the turn, he calls and loses and writes in chat (like he likes to do) I also like to chat so chat back whilst conveniently flopping two pair. The whole tournament I was making my sizes xxx599 (because I saw Keith Hawkings 3bet to 1599 in the Sunday 530 and thought the sizing was cool) so from level 6 making it 1259, to level 14 making it 11599, to level 50 making it 320599 this was the sizing I used.
Anyway, I saw this as a great spot to fake misclick, 1) He can interpret it as a fake misclick because its very easy to do when you manually write your sizes and 2) He was too busy typing trying to be clever that he may just read it as a normal cbet and call quickly. He had A4 (t43) and fell for it and I won the $108k and the bracelet. Huge respect to him, he's a good guy really.. He is very good at poker and he was very humble in defeat.
It really means everything to me and I'm ecstatic. Speaking to my friends and family afterwards was really nice, everybody was so happy for me and everybody spoke so kindly to me. I'm very lucky to have made the friends from poker that I have done.
Tomorrow is my teams first league match, so I'm missing the first half of Sunday which is very convenient anyway as it means I can start later and be very fresh for the $10k high roller. I noticed I'm 4th in the WCOOP leader board, so guess I'll be playing a lot this week and if its close next week I'll really go for it, but its really not a goal of mine right now.
Few crazy hands from yesterday..
1) Jakoon
http://www.boomplayer.com/poker-hands/Boom/15861433_E4C171EA99I expected him to call this 3bet pretty honestly, he had a limping range on the button too with these stacks. I made my 3bet large to prompt a shove or fold from him. We get to post flop and lots of specific player reads helped me with this one
2) The craziest hand of poker I've ever played?
http://www.boomplayer.com/poker-hands/Boom/15863114_170018600FThis guy was 3/4/5 betting way too much. 2 orbits before I 5bet half my stack with KK and got to showdown. I had played really tight and just thought this would work really well ( he had very low call 3bet/4bet and his bb defend was 17% so thought he was pre flop warrior that would give up)
3) 3rd last hand of the day
http://www.boomplayer.com/poker-hands/Boom/15863180_89775E2A18Villain had 91% rfi otb, relatively high f23b. Think pre is good/fine, flop fine too. Turn is interesting, I can either bet turn shove river, bet turn check river, check turn bet river or check turn check river.
I think bet turn/shove river is viable but risky
I bet bet turn check river is bad because he has a lot of missed draws that would fold to my jam
I think check turn/bet river is really sexy because we rep Ax/qq/kk really well this way and if we had a draw we would always always jam this exact turn card because of the fold equity we get. He will likely not slow play many big hands because of the board being drawy even though he should.
4) Last hand of the day
http://www.boomplayer.com/poker-hands/Boom/15863235_AAFD210245This is vs the guy from the A3 hand. Fun hand
5) Really interesting hand that I'm super unsure about
http://www.boomplayer.com/poker-hands/Boom/15867877_460A194AD6I limp which is std. Check flop is good, nothing better folds, nothing better will fold and nothing worse calls. Turn I think check is still best as he doesn't have a wide bluff catching range here at all. River is sick interesting, I'm close to bottom of my range and he has a lot of 9x that I can make fold, I really have very few potential bluffs and Qx could fold too. He called, but I still kinda dig it. WUG?
Author