TRIP REPORT DTD500 5 + 7 May 2012
This is the regular 'monthly' dusk till dawn £500 no limit holdem tournament that is frequented by some very good live players, a couple of online whizzkids, a lot of satelliting players (myself included) and a whole bunch of recreational funsters. I have performed well in this tournament in the past, making day 2 last year when it was a £300 and that day my 10's couldn't beat regular dtd player 'chinese frankies' 7's all in pre flop. Other than this I've had some good runs this year at day 1 and unfortunately come unstuck in similar situations, busting only once in a 'bad situation' (tptk + nfd vs idiot end of a run on super wet board - sigh @ the call!
)
However when I sat down to play on Saturday 5 I found myself 3 handed at a 9 handed table with a couple of players who I stereo-typed as players I would enjoy playing vs and we discussed and lol'd at how we could chop away at the other stacks if we took it in turns and raise/ folded until more got here.....
[ ] This went well for them
[ ] They folded to let me win pots preflop
[X] instead I crushed them postflop with my hedge!
So we of course had some skirmishes but I'd already decided to not do anything as a bluff for more than 10bb's at this early stage. So instead I made a couple of top or second pair type hands and just let the two of them try to bluff me for half an hour or so. This worked well and we'd gone from 30k starting up to almost 34k. Then we had a player or two join our table and after a while we had 8/9 players here and ready.... the two I'd been playing with didn't seem to realise I'd changed gears and was no longer playing any hands at all.. Instead I just watched, waited and tried to build up profiles on the 2 to my right and 2 to my left as these are the most likely for me to tangle because of position. Only problem is David 'crushingonline' L'honore is on our direct left.... This is both good and bad, I get to watch a very good MTT player work but I also have to contend with him, we're 'friends' and I don't expect him to mess around with me very much. He knows I've been working on my game and I 'think' that he will respect my game enough to know that its not worth skirmishing when the rest of the table was so good to toy with.
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I had a small tangle with one of the early guys, we'll call this one EG2 and we'd flatted in LP
to a min open, with another one or two guys coming along.
FLOP
He cbets liike 350 into 450, we call, everyone else folds.
With a bkdr fd and gutty on a board that doesn't rate to hit his range as much as ours, the plan was to float this flop a lot and raise any brick non Q+ turn or to continue on anything that improves us and give up on offsuit A/K/Q's...
TURN
HU He tentatively cbets 600 into a pot of 1150, I was 99% sure this bet was a weak hand trying to have one more stab, the bet sizing wasn't consistent with his previous hands for value and to me it was A or K high type hand exclusively.
One of the best and worst cards in the deck imo.. it brings our extra outs, makes it hard for him to have tp and we can rep HUGE from now on. So we're intending to now flat a turn bet (dont actually expect one all that often, people will give up here with AK/ AQ type hands some %) and we will be raising huge on all brick rivers and a little smaller on all value rivers. Probably checking back if we make a pair as I've been owning myself in these spots with a bet in recent times - villain dependant i would defo make this bet with a rivered 8 or 6 some % of the time.
RIVER
Well this is a pretty good river card, we gone done made a flooosh or something. Got 5 of same color = good hand so the french tell me.
The guy looks at the river and i see a 'glint' of something in his eye, I'm not sure what this means but my suspicion at the time was that he thought this would be a good river to bluff. He takes a little while and slides over a bet of 925 into a now 2350 pot. I try to work through sizings and eventually settle on making it HUGE.. I did this because if I've been wrong throughout the hand and he has a T or a value hand then he will call a big bet but never reraise without Axdd or a house. Also, if he has hit the J and wants to sheriff me then I want it to cost him. Tbh i didn't expect a call very often at all, but wanted to be able to bet big on rivers in the future and have suspicion be my ally.
I raise to 4100 which by my quick calculations was just under pot. 3275 + 925 = 4200 so I wasn't far off. And he makes a seriously frustrated face then sigh folds - maybe he had
or something....
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We carry on for a while without playing any hands of note, mainly some small calls in position when 3-4 way and we have something like
or
. I see some very over valued hands go to showdown and realise one or two of the guys are going to be worth never bluffing, but vbetting HUGE, so this note taken I carry on.
Eventually we get to a hand where otb I flat
and David L'honore completes the SB, with BB coming along vs MP open from EG2 again.
FLOP
Eeerrrr.... wellll ummmmm, think thats yes hold on... 10..... J.....Q......K.....A..... thats a run! we've made a RUN!!!!! off the flop.
So this is how we play our expertly flopped nuts.
check, check, EG2 bets 950ish into 1300 or so, we flat and L'honore says something next to me about how he has KQ and 'watch this' as he's flopped a straight... (lol) then the bb comes along.
TURN
Pretty sweet brick imo, Dave checks (and says 'I shoulda folded flop, playing so bad'), BB checks and EG2 checks... I take my time and decide I need to build a pot here and that BB or EG2 will not be going away if they have any tp, but probably not folding to two big bullets if they have a good tp. I make it 2625 to play, L'honore snap folds and so does BB. EG2 flicks the call in, in a 'knew youd bet' kinda way. I just lol'd hard inside deciding that on any brick river I'm going to make it absolutely MAHUSSIVE!
RIVER
BRICKSSSSSS! we love being builders cos when we find dem bricks and slap some cement on, no problems happen and we win all the time!
He checks quickly and I take a long time... really working out the exact pot, but never looking at him or the pot, just at the 4 chips im shuffling in my hand and the same corner of the cards in my other hand. Eventually I work out that the pot is approx 10.5k and I fire out a full 11625 bet. He instantly shuffles in his seat uncomfortably, he knows he's beat but can't do it... He can't make the 'fold'. Only problem for me is that this bet is HUGE, he has something like 24K left from his 30K starting... and this is for half of dem chippies. But as I hoped the earlier hand obv played on his mind and he eventually flicked in the call with I'm told
.
Really? just one pair? wow.... thank you for the boost sir.
Now we're really trucking on and we have something like 60K when avg is 31.5k.
Dave says afterwards that he knew my flop call was massive and that he thought my obv KQ riverbet was way too big... We discussed it after and agreed vs most competent villains this bet should be somewhere between 6700-9100. However he said well played on getting the max and that he wants his 1k back as he gifted it to me and he wants interest.
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We now super chill... We're not getting busy at all and continue to build reads, profiles and to observe play.... No one seems to notice we're not even playing anymore, even with potentially the tournament CL and one of the biggest mouths in the room! I stay quiet and reseved, occassionally chatting to Dave but eventually a guy in seat 3 wakes up and begins to create the best table in the room.
This man was Andrew Bradshaw. The guy is a poker legend, and only rivalled 'if' surpassed by 'The Fish himself' (Colburn Tomlin).
Andrew woke me up and our banter and combined destruction of the table lead to the most incredible run through of players I've ever seen. Our table chewed up something like 3 players an hour for about 4 hours straight. With Andrew and myself being the main beneficiaries..
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One such hand was another of my 'runnin like bolt' pots where I find dem
on the button, and squeeze to 1900 the EP raise and call....
To my suprised David L'honore pulls out of the closet, the old 1984 ice cold '4bt/ reraise' to make it 4700 to play. Now I know Dave 'could' be doing it light here vs me, but he's not doing it light vs the EP raiser + call so I'm a little confused because I have half of the K's which means he with a range of only QQ+/ AK he is likely to have QQ or AA.... sigh. Then a recreational player who's recently been moved to our table then hits a mushroom or something and shouts 'maaaario' as he fistpump COLD 5 bets from the BB. WTF!!! Well the good thing about this is this guy's range imo is going to be something like 10's+, AQs+ and as such I like that he will let me requeeze Dave out if he has a 30% hand he wouldn't have folded otherwise.
So now the betting has gone...
EP - open to 450
MP - call 450
BTN - I make it 1900
DL - makes it 4700
BB - 11k (playing 18k behind)
EP fold
MP fold
BTN - I take a lot of time, as they've seen me do and fold or seen me do and raise... and eventually I click it back (cib) to 18.5k
DL - pukes in his own mouth (i hear it slide slowly down his throat) and then he slides his cards into the muck to keep his 24k stack intact (he claims AK but I later find out he had the other two KK's...... ouch!)
BB - looks confused, and then sigh shoves the other 18k in for a 29k total and a 65k pot with me when I snap call and have 30k left.
He has dem QQ's and we're not even sweating!
Boom, we do a hold and now have the tournament CL for sure and are properly trucking along. We have a respectable finishing Day1 stack already and the average is still 34k - cmon leggggggo!
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