How it went - part I

This post describes this tournament.

On the very first hand, I got Presto! But the guy to my left, who would turn out to be a complete donkey, raised strongly so I bravely folded.

Hand 9, I got JQ as BB, both clubs. I bet on the two-club flop and again on the J river, my opponent folded. Three hands later I got JJ, but no action.

I then went card dead for a while, but fortunately the blinds were still low. Eventually I got TT UTG and raised to 400 = 4BB. I got one caller, who had A9! A flop of 789 convinced him to bet and call my all-in. The river actually gave him two pair, but fortunately the turn had been a 6... This brought me back to an about average stack of 2730.

Then I got AA four hands later! And even better, there was an all-in in front of me, of a player holding JJ and a short stack. I reraised, which was really not necessary, and isolated on him. At this point, as the cards hit the table, my wife asked how it was going. I said "well, as long as there is no Jack on the river..." and then the Jack hit the river, naturally. Back down to 1430 :-(

On the very next hand, I got 66 in MP, there was one limper. Blinds were 75/150 at this point. I went all-in. My M was 6, I think this move is sort of OK but of course I was upset at losing with my aces. I got lucky when the limper called with AK and I won the race: 3000.

Immediately after that, I got JJ myself! No limpers this time, and I made a standard raise to 450. It seems that my opponent from just now was sort of upset, he pushed with T6d... There were two diamonds on the board by the turn, but fortunately a third one did not appear: 4500.

Only two hands after this, I got AK. (This just goes to show how well it can work out if you are patient and wait for good cards. Of course, sometimes you can wait forever...) I raised to 600 after one limper. The BB called and the limper, who actually had only 775 left at this point and should not have been limping in the first place, put the rest of his chips in. Both of us called. The flop was low cards and my live opponent, with only 900 chips left now, checked it. [Seems he also did not know how to play with a short stack, there is no sense in just calling for half your stack! He had first called for 450 (because he was BB), and then for an additional 325 (the short all-in).] This reeked of weakness and with AK in my hand, I had no reason to think I was behind. I put in an additional 450 into the 2850 pot and my opponent actually folded!! This is absolutely the worst way to play: first to call two big bets, and then to refuse to put in any more chips at extremely favorable odds. He was getting 6:1 odds, although of course, since he is already completely pot-committed (one would think...) he should have considered my bet as a 900 bet, in which case his odds are 3:1. Those are very tempting odds, one would think, certainly with a hand that was worth two big calls preflop... Anyway, so he folded, and the player who was already all-in showed KQ. This brought me up to 6450. In five hands, I went up from 1430 to 6450, very nice...

A few hands later, I limped with J9s OTB. The SB had only 640 left and pushed. The BB folded and I got better than 2:1 odds to call, so I had to call. Because of this, it would possibly have been better to fold preflop: I could have expected the desperate SB to make a move, forcing me to put in my chips for what I could not hope to be better than a coinflip. However, I actually won the coinflip: he had Q5 (and pushed after a limper?...) and I made a runner-runner flush, my only flush in this tournament, I think.

After this the table was just completely sick of me and they kicked me out :-) Or it could have been the server who transferred me to another table :-) Nothing much happened for a while. I open-raised with ATo on the cutoff and got no action. A round later, I open-raised with AJo one position earlier and a total fish with K6o in the BB went all-in! I got 2:1 odds and called, but he made a runner-runner straight... This brought me back down to earth and 4400 chips.

Half a round later, a funny thing happened. The SB pushed when I was BB, but his stack was so short (only 2BB) that he gave me 3:1 odds to call! Given his desperate situation, I had to assume that I had at least 35% winning chances, so I called... with 53o... and won :-) He actually had QTd, a pretty good hand under the circumstances (but not more than 65% favorite against two lower cards). Unfortunately, I lost these chips on the next hand when I called a raise with AJs and missed the flop against three opponents.

So now I again had about 4500 chips, and the blinds were 200/400 by now, so my M was getting smaller. But even before I had to pay the next blinds, I got AK UTG, raised to 1200, a player with 2000 pushed and I had an automatic call. He only had KJo (very strange push...) and I won: 7000.

Then I was BB, and we got a blinds battle. He called, I checked. The flop was Axx and he did a minbet, just like in the previous round. This time however, I reraised him to 1200 (still in the rush of the previous hand, I guess!) and he folded. Always nice to have a scare card on the flop.

Now comes another hand where my play is questionable, to put it mildly. I put it in a separate post. After this hand, I had 11000 chips. A few hands after this, I folded AQo to a raise and an all-in reraise in front of me. The original raiser folded and the reraiser claimed to have had AA. Two hands later, we were in the money, though due to the stupid payout structure at Pacific, this meant a payout of $16.20 -- the buyin had been $16.50... So there was still some work to be done if I actually wanted to make a profit out of this game.

To be continued!