Day 125k at 50/100. My game plan was to start of very snug and just work out how everybody was playing, however in the first orbit I was dealt, as Sean would say, an inordinate number of premium (well, 78ss+) starting hands and was raising or involved in almost every pot. I had a completely maniacal image from the off! Not really the plan but was actually rather pleased – even more likely to get paid off now!
We lose all of the aforementioned pots, only flesh wounds though, we’re down to 21k and find
on the cutoff and raise, and the button and the big blind called.
is just the flop we’ve been waiting to see (incredibly hadn’t flopped a set in the first orbit) and we cbet 550 into about 800. The button called. We’d already had a battle a few hands ago which he won, I think he thought I was pretty crazy. The turn came a
and I bet 1200, he thought for a moment and raised to 2800. Boom. Should get a double up if he has 4x or 35 or even 22! I raise to 6500 with about 15k behind. He snap calls. The river is probably the nut worst card in the deck, the
. Not only does it massively harm my chances of getting paid by 22 and 35 but I can actually be beat by 4x now! I thought for a while, it’s not straight forward what to do here imo, I can’t see a shove getting paid by worse very often. But hey, I just might…I move my chips over the line and pray inside that I don’t get snapped. He takes one second (a beautiful second) and calls and rues his bad luck as he slams down his beaten hand. To my surprise and slight amusement he held pocket fives. …#welcometoitalymrgoulder
Dream start. I have 42k now and then spend the next 2 hours getting dealt so many small pocket pairs and going setmining, only to check/fold every flop, it was getting frustrating, dribbling away. Then I 3b AK vs a laggy opener and he peels oop and the flop comes 772. I decided to cbet 1/3 pot he calls and we check back the 6 turn, happy to get to showdown now. The river comes a 6 and he bets about 65% of the pot. I called pretty happily, really expecting my Ace high to be good most of the time, I didn’t expect to see TT or anything ever just from my read when he called the flop, I was expecting to see KQ, KJ, 33-55 those sort of hands. He had 66 for backdoored quads which irked me a bit.
I was down to 28k, just above my starting stack, I was a bit annoyed at this, I was seeing some mind boggling stuff going on around me and just needed a hand to get involved. Then we got busy
I will definitely get flamed for this by many people for this hand, but I loved it
.
A really bad player opened utg at 100/200 to 400 and I was utg+1 with
and 3bet to 1100. He had the most ridiculous sizing tells ever, he’d at least 3x it with good hands, and limp or minraise small pairs/suited connectors. So I 3b for value/isolation and then angry fish cold called the sb (he wasn’t angry at this time but that’s what we’ll call him , you’ll see why later
) My read was that he had some sort of pretty hand he wanted to see a flop with. I’d obviously rather just be heads up with the original raiser but this guy was pretty bad and I also had a really strong bluffing tell on him so was looking for a spot to use that. Now I know I’m going on a lot about ‘tells’ but in this tournament, I found them so so useful and accurate. I’m not big on them general, but I was really in the zone here. The utg raiser folded and angry pretty hand man and I went to the flop.
. The pot was 2800 and he donked for 1600. This is a draw almost everytime, so I floated one, with over(s) and backdoor straight and flush draws. The turn came a
and he checked. I bet 4000 and he thought for a long time and called, he looked like he was going to fold at one point but he threw in the chips in a “can’t help myself” sort of way. The “Ian Gascoigne” way if you like
The river was a blank, the
. The pot was 14k and he then did the tell! He picked up a 5k chip and then added to it with a 1k, a 500, some 100s and finally some 25s. When he’s betting for value bets quickly and more rounded denominations, when bluffing he wants to “beef” up the bet with his change. Pleno does this a lot as a reverse tell to get paid off. I’d seen it twice before, once he showed it (in comedy hand, level 1 he 3b an utg opener from the bb, peeled his 4b, then c/raised AJ6r and showed the
when the guy folded KK lol) and the other time he got lucky on the river (bet/calling the turn with AQo on 9753r and rivering a Q vs AK lol).
Now I’m in a pickle though. I have 21k back and he’s bet 6875, he has me well covered. I’m so sure he’s bluffing but I only have K high! He could be bluffing with Ace high! If I’m wrong with my read and shove and get called - I’m out, there’s no rebuys or re-entries, I’m out the door and back to England. If I call and he shows Axdd I feel like an absolute idiot and would sincerely hope no-body I knew saw and just try and erase the memory from my brain.
I really thought he had JTdd, 9Tdd J8dd, T8dd and maybe Ax dd but felt like he didn’t even have Ace high showdown value. I wasn’t sure on that last bit, and I think shoving would probably be better given my reads, but if I was wrong I wanted to still have a chance and not be out.
So, I took a deep breath, and called, and he turned over
. I was over-the-moon that I was right and the entire table went a bit crazy for a moment when they saw my King high. I think that was the most satisfying pot I’ve ever won.
I know what all the haters will say “what if he had 33 what if he had Axdd, why do you need to do take the risk in a really soft comp”. But in the words of Lex Veldhius
“I’d rather look like a fool and learn from it than wimp out and not go with my read”. I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I’d folded and he’d shown me a bluff.
Stacking my chips, I find Jacks under the gun the very next hand and open. Angry man is now Angry, well, simmering, like a timebomb about to blow. He peels and I cbet a lovely
(FINALLY, flopped a set!) he calls, the turn is a
I bet again, he calls. The river is a
, I bet 4k and he minraises to 8k wiiiiii!!!! He has about 23k back and now my heart is pounding, I could be chip leader here….I think for a while and shove. He slams his fist on the table and shoots up in the air, cursing in Italian. Walks around the table, pacing up and down. I heard him say something about “duo mani” or something. I guessed mani meant hands because of the French and so realised he was saying that only two hands beat him – sweet – definitely getting called here. He says something which MUST be “fuck it” in Italian and calls and goes beserk when I turned over my hand. He showed
.
We’re chip leader and now it’s a 15 minute break. Morale absolutely sky high, absolutely loving the game! A fun 2 hands.
Halfway through the next level I get out of line vs this German lad who was really good/ switched on. The weak player I mentioned earlier with the preflop sizing tells, minraises the cutoff. I 3b the button with
and the German guy cold
the small blind. I knew he’d picked up on the opener’s obvious tell and wasn’t going to let me keep pounding on him. The stacks were perfect so I could 5b and I fully planned to 7b shove if he 6bet. Never done a 7b bluff before, was looking forward to it
It was 20k out of my 80k stack if it went tits up, I’d still be double average, plus the spot was just too good. Unfortunately he peeled my 5b and we saw a flop! Flop a flush one time…
The flop was an awful Q93r, not even a heart for me to work with!
I just gave up at this point and checked back and folded to his turn lead. I can’t really do anything else I don’t think. Never mind.
We go card dead for a while and chill on our now top 5 stack, get moved to David Peters table (didn’t know who he was until after the day though) and then moved again, Peters comes with us and find our new table to be very aggressive, lots of 3/4/5betting going on, but it mainly looks like button clicking, rather than well-thought out aggression.
The eldest chap at the table who seemed pretty tight cold 4bet one hand to 5800, some-one peeled and he bet out 15k on a Qxx board. I was sure he had Aces or King. Never got to find out, but with that in mind, how bizarre is this hand…
I raise
utg (which is probably a fold on this table) and got 4 callers, including him from the cutoff. I cbet 2/5 pot (about 2200) on
, only he called. The turn was the
giving me a gutshot and nut flush draw – like. I bet 4800 and he thinks for ages. Then raises to 11500. Now at this point I’m pretty sure I’m beat, I mean, how can I not be beat?! The turn tank was almost too long for it to be a nutted hand, but still… We both had over 50k back so if I did have the straight I’d win a huge pot if I got there. DIAMOND PLEASE!
I’m not shy about admitting how much I love backdoor flushes in general, but binking this one was particularly sweet.
on the river. I’m not sure he’ll raise me with a straight if I donk, so I decided to check and hope he went for one of his 1.5x pot bets or would bet and snap call a raise. He snap checked behind sigh! I turned over my hand since it was the nuts (though in Europe it seems completely acceptable and standard to wait until the last aggressor has shown his hand) and he mucked. I almost never do this (in fact, can’t remember ever doing it before) but I asked the dealer if I could see his hand, and eventually after a big palava, I was allowed and to my shock he had A4o. I’ll never be ceased to be amazed and surprised by things at the poker table.
That’s about it for day 1, I bagged up 101k which double average, very happy with the days work, really excited about the next.
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