Now to the gory details...
There were far fewer runners than expected, it ended up that 75% of the field got a bye through round 1 but we did not manage to fade a match and instead get drawn against Isaac Haxton. For those not familiar with the name he has $4m in tournament winnings, big winner at nosebleed HU cash and $5k HUSNGs. Basically besides Isildur he's the nut worst person to draw.
Ike snap takes one of his two rebuys so start with 20k at 100/200, started asking me questions about how I was going to play the rebuys in a general attempt get me to top up to 100bbs. Like I said in the OP, 50bbs is absolutely my comfort zone whereas 100bbs is not, so I stick with 10k leaving 50bb effective stacks.
Hands 1 and 2 were both open, 3bet, fold. Hand 3 I find 99, 4bet/call and lose the flip vs KQdd to go down 2:1 right off the bat.
Right from the off Ike was playing pretty much 100% of hands OOP with a 3b%age of over 50%. I really didn't want to play into that and start getting put in a blender OOP with a wide preflop range in 3bet pots so I was a little less aggro pre, but got a lot of double barrels through when I did 3bet and I think he was giving my ranges a little too much credit, so the plan was to really open it up until he adjusted by playing back more in 3bet pots. He didn't really start playing back that much and I grinded back up to 14k when this pot goes down:
Hero (14,000)
Ike (16,000)
Blinds 200/400
Ike opens to 800, Hero calls with
Flop (1600)
Hero checks, Ike checks
Turn (1600)
Hero checks, Ike bets 900, Hero raises to 2700, Ike calls
River (7000)
Hero is all-in for 10500, Ike tanks and folds.
That along with a 3bet and double barrel with KJ on AQ58 got me into the lead with 23k chips and one rebuy left - Ike with 27k and no more rebuys. Then we play a big hand that I don't remember betsize of but I min A9o on the button, he peels flop is 942r he c/calls, turn Q he c/calls again river T I check back and he shows 94o for a pretty funky peel and flopped top 2 so I take my last rebuy which has us pretty much even.
Next big hand he opens I 3bet
which is pretty thin since he was peeling my 3bets a reasonable amount. I cbet the
flop he calls, we check down 8 turn 8 river and he shows
.
Then a really strange spot comes up. I peel 9To playing 22 bigs to a minraise at 400/800, flop
and I c/raise his 1600 cbet to 4300, he asks how much it is but I for some reason was sure that he said all in. I say call after a few seconds and everyone looks a bit bemused. After a little while he decides to call. Turn is a Q and I bet 4200, he tanks for ages and folds.
Blinds up to 600/1200 and I have 15 bigs, open
to 2400 he calls. Flop
I cbet 1300 into 4800 and he puts me in with the old Q6o to put me back in the lead 3:1.
Ike is down to 15bbs now. I jam over a min with 44 and lose a flip for the win vs KQo and we're back to even stacks.
A bit of back and forth with Ike limping a lot - I found a coulple of broadway hands and had him limp/folding a lot playing effective stacks of 25 bigs.
Blinds up again to 800/1600 and I make a standard raise/call for 19bbs w/K9o and can't get there vs ATo with exactly even stacks to start the hand.
It was a bit of an epic - the match went on for nearly 3 hours and like I said after going down 2:1 on the third hand I had the momentum for most of the rest of the way. He said afterwards that he thought I played well which bodes well for the future from a legit sicko! The cynics will probably say that he'd tell everyone that but I'm in no doubt that it was sincere and while its a little disappointing to have so much go against me I'm very happy with the decisions that I made and am absolutely certain that I'm +EV in this tournament.
Can't wait till next year now!
Thanks for everyones support. It sucks that on the face of it the sceptics will be able to say 'I told you so' but on balance I think we all got our money in good.
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