Right, I think that's everything else sorted, now for a short report -
I've recently been approaching these sorts of tournaments with a slightly different mindset, of a much more small ball-y style. Properly went for this yesterday, played loads of pots with a bunch of hands, with some mixed results. Certainly feel like I made some very bad decisions in the middle of the day, and there are a fair few hands worthy of note.
The first such hand involved us calling a raise to 500 @ 100/200 with
. The button, a somewhat spewy guy who seems to play a lot of the bigger buy in tournaments, three bets to 2200, gets a cold call from the big blind and two more calls, so we flick it in and see a flop five ways of
. BB donk leads for 1100, we call, button dwells for a while and calls. Turn is a brick, BB checks, we bet 5600, and button tank raises to 11,200, leaving himself with about 12k back. We fold, although I am pretty sure this was effectively a bluff (potentially an unknowing one with an overpair), but I don't think this was a situation where we could do much about it. Very strange raise imo from this particular player, and a very strange spot.
Anyway, we chipped all the way back up from this low point of just under 20k to around 50k, and called a raise in the cut off with 67. We see a small three bet from the small blind, and two calls. We also call. Flop comes A96 rainbow, checks to us, and we bet 4k (about half pot). At this point of the hand, I feel the small blind will cbet any single A, and check call every pair from 10's up to AA. One of the other players in the pot tended to lead any board on which he flopped some sort of equity, so he was fairly clearly folding, so to my mind I was certain to get one fold, probably to get another, and pretty sure to get a check call and then a check fold on a brick turn from the small blind. We do get one call from the SB, and see a 9 on the turn. In hindsight, this is prolly the worst card to bet, but since the guy was left with a little under a pot sized bet behind, I decided to go with my initial thoughts putting his range on a pair between 10's and AA (against which we only get a call from AA, I do have significant history with this player to be confident of this). So we put him in, and he calls with AA, and we cry in the toilets for a minute or two during the next break.
I get moved tables after chipping back up to about 40/45k, and instantly lose a pot where a lady shoves a flop over my cbet for quite a bit, and we make a pretty loose call with one pair feeling confident that she most likely has a draw. She, unfortunately, did not. Cue sobbing in toilets.
We very quickly end up in a pot with Gascoigne senior, where we call in a limped pot with 22 otb, and see a flop of
. Checks to us, we lead for 2k out of roughly 22, Ian check raises to 8k, we move in, he calls, he has
and we conveniently bink a
for a full double. In the next hour or so we continue to chip up, losing a reasonable pot to Shola but continuing to win loads of small ones to stay reasonably comfortable. Then, we open AJos and get calls from Greek Jack and the BB, who is playing about 20bbs. Flop comes Axxhh, the BB shoves his 18bbs, we call, he has
(that hand was getting around a lot, for some reason) and makes a flush ott. We wail in the toilets (I'm a sucker for a terrible pun).
We go back to chipping up, get ourselves back up to about the 50k mark, and play a hand with the Q4 guy from earlier where we flat our button. We float the cbet on
with a gutshot and two overs, fail to improve on the turn but pick up a ninja on the guy when he bets 6.5k so call anyway, river comes the
, he bets 8k and we jam. He folds, and we hit around the 75k mark. We sit back and watch Shola win the lot for a while, and then call one of her raises with A10, along with Greek Jack and one other. Flop comes
. Checks to us, and we lead for a little over half pot. Jack calls, others fold. Turn is a brick, we check, Jack checks. River is a brick, we check, Jack shoves 30k. We dwell for some time and decide to make the call, and Jack turns over
to get us properly going in the tournament with a level and a half left to play.
In all, we won absolutely loads of small pots throughout the day, made some pretty poor decisions to cost us a fair few chips at times, but were able to pull it back. Certainly not my best day, but I was lucky enough to find some good hands and good spots when it counted, and played pretty well towards the latter half of the day to bag 125k. GL us!
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