Tournament Recap -- 10k Win in Stars 50k Guaranteed

Like many tournaments which lead to nice scores for me, the 50k guaranteed, $109 buyin nlh tournament at 7pm ET on pokerstars on Tuesday night started off kinda slow. This was only maybe the 6th or 7th time I have ever played this event -- both due to buyin and timing constraints -- and my pattern of no real success continued early as from the 3000 starting stack, I slowly dwindled down, 25 here, 50 there, 120 here, another 50 there. By 30 minutes in, I was down to 2600, and as I remember saying in one of my earlier tournament recaps this year, things were not starting off well for this being one of the tournaments where I can make a deep run, as opposed to the many, many tournaments where I bust before the final 25th percentile of the field in these things. At some point I picked up A7o on the button and ended up making a hero call at the river with one pair against the aggromonkey in the cutoff to get back up to the 3000 starting stack, and then I looked down to find pocket Aces a few hands later in middle position, facing a raise ahead of me from early position. I reraised, the original raiser called -- and this was a guy I had seen raising and calling liberally all through the time I had sat with him -- and he then proceeded to call a bet of around 70% of the pot on the 628 rainbow flop, and then instacall another 70% potbet from me that put me allin after the 5 on the turn. He showed the solidly overplayed pocket 9s and I shot up to over 6300 chips. Not too long after was the first break, with me having ended up with a perfectly acceptable first round after an inauspicious beginning:



I got my first big stack near the beginning of Hour 2, when I reraised preflop against the same aggrofonk who paid my AA off in the first hour, this time with my AK, which the lagtard happily called. When the flop came 863 with two hearts, I opted not to c-bet and instead checked behind, and when the turn card brought a second 3 (not a card I could realistically be scared of), and my opponent led out for 600 into the 2700-chip pot:



I felt compelled to call, just from an odds perspective if nothing else -- I mean, what kind of a bet is that? The river then brought an offsuit King, and I led out for the rest of my stack and even Mr. Callsalot found a fold at that point, pushing my stack up to 10,000 for the first time on the night. Things got even better not too long afterwards when I called a preflop raise in a 5-way pot with pocket 5s, and then flopped my first set of the night, an awesome situation with so many people in there as long as you don't let them suck out on your flopset. So after one check on a potentially scary board where I'd flopped bottom set, the action was led into me:



I quickly considered my options and knew that with three people still in there to act behind me, and my confidence that I will freely lay this down if the wrong turn card falls and I get heavy action in front of me, I was going to slow play, hopefully get a couple of overcallers here and really try to make some money, if I can dodge a scare card on the turn. I just called:



and the guy right behind me called as well, with the last two players folding. A two fell on the turn, creating a second flush draw on the board but clearly not filling any draws out there on the flop, and when the original raiser checked to me this time around:



I figured I wanted to do the stealiest-looking thing I could. As I thought this through, one option just seemed to stand out from all the rest, so I went for it:



Normally, as was the case here, I will only do this kind of meta kind of move where I think there is a good chance from the play of the hand that my opponent is also on an overpair.



People have a lot of trouble laying down overpairs of any kind out there in the world, I find, any kind of overpair at all. I've seen more people than I can count stack off with 99 or TT on an all-rag board, even when their opponent had reraised them preflop and sometimes called or even led out with a good-size bet on the flop as well. That used to be me, to tell the truth, I always used to get eliminated from tournaments with TT vs AA or flopsets or some shit, and then I would spend the next two days bemoaning my bad luck. At some point though, you just have to face that you might be up against an overpair, or worse, even if you are holding a middle overpair yourself. KK vs AA is a setup hand, but that doesn't mean that 88 or 99 vs AA is too. It happens. That's not a trap I walk into much anymore, but I benefited big-time here from a guy who clearly overplayed a mediocre hand to the extreme, without ever taking one of the early streets to do what he had to do to find out conclusively whether his pair of 9s was ahead or behind. Instead, he kept betting and betting, and then made the cardinal sin of calling my large allin push with just the 9s, and just like that I was up over 21,000 in chips and way at the top of the leaderboard less than two hours in here:



4th place of 336 players remaining, of the 768 who had started just over an hour and a half earlier. I was way up where I wanted to end up in this thing, but it was farrrr too early to get real excited. Not much happened in the rest of Hour 2, and I went into the second break still in great position, in 5th of 262 runners remaining. With my massive stack, I started really bullying the table, always raising amounts that I knew would be uncomfortable for everyone else at the table but which I really didn't care much about either way given the pile of chips I was sitting on. Preflop raise repeatedly to 2400 when the average stack is just under 10k, stuff like that. I chipped up solidly doing this, but it's a slow plod for a guy like me because I end up having to fold to preflop reraises and to raises on the flop more than a more passive player, but I inched my way up through the 20,000's in chips through most of the rest of Hour 3 in this tournament. In doing so, I generally kept pace with my peers on the leaderboard, slipping to 14th out of 170 left, and then back up to 10th of 160 and 150 remaining, before I lost a race with AQ vs 99 to slip back down to around 21k shortly before the end of Hour 3. At the third break, I was still alive as we were approaching the ITM positions in the tournament, but smack in the middle of the pack:



My work would be cut out for me to get back into the thick of this thing in Hour 4. Early in the next hour, I picked up my second pocket Aces of the night, and I opted to limp with them as I do sometimes in tournaments (less so in cash) when the action hasn't been opened yet to me. Only the big blind stayed in anyways (I guess my preflop limp was kinda suspicious after all the raising I'd been doing for the past 90 minutes or so on a huge stack). When my opponent -- who had about half as many chips as I had to start the hand -- raised my c-bet allin on a connected but really not all that frightening board:



I again felt like I was probably ahead and had to make the call given the way I had slow-played my monster before the flop. Turns out my read was true, I was ahead, and I faded eight outs twice to climb over 30k for the first time on the night:



This was good for 19th place out of 98 remaining, so I was once again climbing my way back into position to make a solid run at the final table. I spent much of the rest of Hour 4 fighting to retain my stack against the ever-advancing blinds and the increasing aggression of those around me, stealing a number of pots when the opportunity presented itself, but then slipping back a step for every couple of steps I took forward as I repeatedly got caught raising with hands I was not willing to call a reraise with. As I mentioned earlier, when you play an aggressive game of no-limit holdem, you're always in there firing at pots, some you have it, and some of them you've got nothing but an impression of what your opponent's cards are. Halfway through Hour 4 I found myself still with 25k in chips, good for 38th place of 64 players remaining, and shortly afterwards I had to fold to another preflop reraise of my steal, dropping me to just over 20k and near the bottom of the remaining field. Eventually, after being reraised on what seemed like 10 or 15 consecutive preflop raises with very little good cards to speak of, I found myself facing yet another preflop reraise in this situation:



It was 16k to call 27k, meaning that I can call if I think my JTs will win 16/43 of the time, or 37%. Given that the Jack and the Ten are not nearly as often dominated as Kings and Aces, knowing that medium pocket pairs were within this super short-stacked opponent's shoving range here for sure, and knowing that I was holding the literal single best of the unpaired hands against even a monster, I figured for these odds I had to make the call. And I wanted to call, after all those times folding to reraises, I was ready to take the plunge, in around 40th of 50 players left, to either get the double I had been seeking for the past three hours or to go busto trying. So I called it, and the flop was naturally horrible, immediately evoking thoughts of yet another early-ITM elimination. But then the turn saved the day for me in a pot where it turned out it would have been a major mistake from an odds perspective if I had folded preflop:



And I had my double-up. I was up to 18th place of 58 remaining, we were well into the money positions at this point, and I would be looking to start amassing a big stack for a final table run. I couldn't get anything else going, and at the end of Hour 4, I was in 26th place of 43 left, back below the midway point of the players left in this thing, in much the same position as I was when entering the fourth round 60 minutes earlier:



I got down to 31st of 36 left early in the fifth hour, and was quickly to the point where I was open-pushing with any Ace, even A2o and A6o, with both of which I managed to survive and pick up the blinds and antes, which at that point amounted to about 30% of my total stack at the time. I then won my biggest pot of the tournament in a key race when the guy to my left called my allin preflop raise with the JackAce, and my pocket 4s held up somehow to lift me to 82k in chips and give me a new life in the tournament, back up to 11th place with 34 left. I frittered away some of those chips until I won a big one when a guy with 88 pushed the rest of his stack in to me on a 63KA board, and I called for most of my stack with my own JackAce which held for a 147k pot that vaulted me into 6th place, the highest I had been in hours. I tacked on another 30k or so in chips when I raised preflop with 98s and then turned a flush that I had bet with on the come on the flop, and then by calling a preflop raise with KQs and flopping top pair Queens, with which I raised a c-bettor on the flop to take down uncontested.

As we wended our way down through the final two tables, I maintained my stack in the 120k-150k range, good for somewhere between 8th and 10th place as we moved down from 20 remaining and into the teens. I eliminated a player in 15th place when I flopped my third set of the night -- with presto, no less -- and the short stack moved in on me with his overpair pocket 8s to the raggy board, getting me up just short of 200k and into 5th place with 15 runners left:



I got over 200k for the first time when I raised the tournament chip leader with my pocket 9s on a raggy flop -- this is generally the way to find out early in the hand if your middle overpair is really good or not -- and the chipleader folded. Then I had my biggest hand of the tournament to that point on a truly bad play by an opponent after I open-raised from the small blind with AK and then the big blind reraised me smallish here:



The odds of me being behind to AA or KK in the blinds here were extremely low, and the odds of him being on a lower Ace are better than him being on any pocket pair, so I went for the allin, and he called my preflop allin re-reraise with what is just about the absolute weakest I think anybody ever calls an allin re-reraise before the flop in a key spot with a nice stack late in an nlh tournament (at least he had the courtesy to instacall with it, the way the JackAce is supposed to be played):



I faded a few straight outs at the river to win this ginormous pot, giving me over 420,000 chips and my first chip lead of the entire tournament:



And when the final table started a few minutes later near the end of Hour 5, I entered in a close third place of nine, with just around 385k in chips, while the chipleaders were both in the low 400s. This enabled me to mostly lay low and take it easy in the earlygoing at the final table, knowing that first prize in this event paid over 14k, or nearly 14 times as much as 9th, and with sufficient chips to wait for the big hands to come to me, that's exactly what I did. A6o across the table took out the short stack's K9o allin preflop for our first final table elimination, and not too long later, I picked up pocket Jacks in the small blind, and faced a stealy-looking raise from the middle-stacked aggressive player on the button. I went for the obvious reraise:



and then my opponent pushed allin for his entire 281k stack, facing me with a significant decision:



As much as I did not want to call off my stack against some kind of higher pair -- and frankly, not wanting to face AK in a race either for all these chips given my position in the tournament -- I just couldn't get away from how aggressive this player had been stealing pots, and the fact that he might easily have put me on a weak holding after I restole from the button, a move he had surely watched me do several times himself over the past couple of hours. Plus, I only had to call 211k to win 367k, so the odds were way easily there for anything even resembling a race. In the end, I flicked my finger to the "call" button, and was shown this:



Boooom! First place of 7 players remaining, with a 14k+ first prize. Come to momma!

I eliminated #6 as well when I won a race with AK vs TT, allin pre:



and I remained in 1st of 6 left as we came to the sixth break, at five minutes to 1am New York time. Oh, and check out my tournament stats that I reviewed during that break:



12% of flops -- that is definitely low for me, but frankly not all that low compared to other deep mtt runs I have made in my day. But the most impressive part of those stats is my win percentage at showdown -- 17 of 19 showdowns won. That is a good 30-40% higher than my usual, and it just shows how often I was getting in ahead in this thing, and holding up when I needed to. And at least one of the two showdowns I lost was my AK losing to AQ allin pre, so in reality it was even better than that. Just one of those crazy nights where almost every read I laid was spot-on, and a few times I needed some good fortune, Lady Luck was right there to see me through.

A short while into Hour 6, a player across the table called the tourney short stack's allin pre with his QTs, and he turned a straight to beat the suited JackAce, and then there were 5, with each of us guaranteed a minimum payment of at least $4032. Good times. Although the winner of that pot took over the chip lead from me with that hand, a lead he only padded when he also eliminated the 5th place player with A6s vs 97s on an Ace-high flop a few minutes later. With four players left in the tournament, I was a solid 2nd, really with two big stacks and two small stacks left in the fray:



I was in a great spot to eliminate #4 here around the midway point of Hour 6:



But that was not meant to be:



Blech. This would have given me back a nice chiplead with three left and a 14k first prize, but as I said, it just wasn't meant to be, and I was back to fighting mode, determined not to let an annoying suckout like that ruin my chance at the big money in the top two spots in the tournament. This proved to be the most annoying part of the entire tournament, as the four of us spent a full hour playing it out 4-handed, seeing very few flops and a whole whole lot of folding to preflop reraises. I held my own, winning a shit-ton of flops with nothing, and raising preflop with every unopened Ace I saw, and most Kings and Queens too, staying ahead of the blinds and antes but just barely as I maintained my hold on second place pretty much for the entire hour straight. Eventually, however, my competitive position in the tournament continued to slide, as late in Hour 6, the chipleader took out #4 with this beauty, also allin preflop:



Sure, it's great that I literally made about $2000 in real cash from that elimination as I moved up to the next miniimum spot on the leaderboard, but when you really want to win the tournament and not just cash well, it can be frustrating when you have the chip lead but then have to watch the same player eliminate #6, #5, #4, and #3 to take over the lead and undo an entire evening's worth of hard work.

We played 3-handed for about 15 minutes, with the player to my left remaining in 3rd place -- although not that far off from my stack at times -- and never managing to pass me for even a brief stay out of the cellar. Eventually, just five hands into Hour 8, the chip leader got his chance to take out #3 as well, calling the shorty's allin preflop with his AQo, and once again the chip leader's favorite held up:



And then there were two:



Note the chipstacks here, after this guy had managed to take out each of the final four players on his way to heads-up play. After having held the chip lead an hour earlier, with my heads-up opponent doing all of these eliminations, I was now down 1.6 million to 570k in chips, more than a 3-to-1 chip deficit, and I figured I would be trying for the early double-up here to make us even and give myself a fighting chance at that 14k first prize. Unfortunately, as I mentioned in yesterday's post, on the seventh hand of heads-up play, I opted to reraise allin preflop with K5o after my opponent's seventh straight preflop minraise. Unfortunately, because this time he had the biggest monster of them all:



And I was done. Out in second of 768 runners, and still picking up more than $10,300 for my efforts:



I'll have some more thoughts on this tournament later in the week I am sure, but hopefully this writeup gives a decent picture of how I turned 1 hundy into ten large over about seven hours of play, winning 21 of 24 showdowns along the way before that fateful last hand. As I wrote on Tuesday morning, finishing second is always a bittersweet way to end a deep tournament run, but the fat cash prize does a lot to make that better. And, I think something about the way I ended as the runner-up here made it not hurt nearly as bad as, say, if I had been the one with the 3-to-1 chip lead and then found a way to lose it. In all, it was another great run for me here early in 2011, as I strive to make good on my New Years' goals with respect to my poker game and my focus and rededication at the virtual tables.

Another Big Score on Pokerstars

Have I told you lately how pokerstars is my new favorite online poker site in 2011?



Blooom!

I am hoping to get up a writeup later on this one, as even though I did not win I have posted a tournament recap on the blog for every five-digit score I have ever won, and frankly, I do love doing the recaps. As much work as it is, the tournament recaps I do here on the blog are just a somewhat more involved and more detailed version of what I review in every mtt I play after I play it. What did I do well, where did I go wrong to get eliminated, and most importantly, what can I do to avoid making that same mistake again? And in a strange way, I enjoy doing them, even though it is a very time-intensive endeavor to do a tournament recap on a blog just right the way I like to do it. Anyways, I am hopeful I will get to recap this one tonight.

When it all came down to the end and I had a chance to win it, the chip leader eliminated the short stack guy to enter heads-up play at a more than 3-to-1 chip advantage over me. It didn't help that the hand I chose to take a stand and shove preflop with two big cards -- just the sixth hand of heads-up play, mind you, with me down about 4-to-1 in chips at the time -- I pushed right into my heads-up opponent's pocket Aces to lose it. Oh well. It never feels good to lose, but a five digit win on pokerstars is never anything to scoff at, and as I always like to evaluate a nice score after a deep mtt run, a hundred buyins is a hundred buyins no matter how you slice it. A hundred buyins is why I spend so many hours a year sitting in front of a laptop screen playing these infernal nlh tournaments.

OK so more on this later. Winning 10k and then just a couple of hours later heading to work, having gotten less sleep than any night you can remember and yet having a noticeable bounce in your step still in the morning is kinda like the Matrix -- you can never quite understand the feeling until you experience it for yourself.

Groundhog Day

Well, it's Groundhog Day, and with what's happening across like more than half the states in this country right now, I'm pretty much positive the little guy ain't seeing his shadow, whatever that means. I got news for you though -- regardless of whether some disgusting rodent in BFE sees his shadow or not, this winter is going to suck balls, and it's going to be loooong, and frosty. Six more weeks of winter? We'll probably be wishing it was only six more weeks from now, come April Fools Day.

Anyways, with Groundhog Day here, and I'm thinking about the awesome movie of the same name starring Bill Murray which has always been a personal favorite of mine -- as Goat astutely points out, it is now clear as Bill Murray's single best movie -- and it got me thinking: What personal poker memory would you most like to relive if you could right now?

For me, I think the answer is clear: Day two of the Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza in late June of 2009. Yes, the day ended with my biggest ever poker tournament win, but the road to get there on Day 2 was about as sick as it comes, one of those crazy sick runs you just hope you get to be along for the ride for once or twice in your life and you just hope not to eff up along the way. This was truly the 90-minute roll in craps, or the 18-straight-winning-hands shoe in blackjack -- one of those couple-of-times-in-a-lifetime things, if you're lucky.

I was starting Day 2 in 32nd place out of 48 runners remaining of the 792 who had started the day before, and I came in to sit at a table with 5 of the top 9 stacks remaining in the tournament seated at it. It was insane -- multiple guys had like entire stacks of a certain color chips, each one of which was almost more than my entire stack. I had 157k in chips but at this table, it felt like 157 chips. Not only was my starting M on the day just a hair short of 6, but I was also completely dwarfed, chip leader two to my left (whose blinds I would be in best position to steal -- yippee), and other four huge stacks across the table and to my right. As soon as we started I knew I was either going to double up a couple of times early to get back in contention with these monsters, or I would be making the lonely stroll back to the MGM with my head hanging low.

And then it happened. What followed was definitely the sickest heater I've ever been on over a short period of time in my poker career. After a slow start to the day, things really started popping in Hour 2. First, the big stack directly across from me got allin behind against me in three separate pots in fairly rapid succession, and over the span of maybe ten hands he had shipped his entire huge stack to me and me alone, jumping me from 157k to over 425k in mere minutes, and then within maybe 10 minutes after that, I won a massive pot against the chipleader when he unfortunately folded TPTK to my allin raise on the turn after extracting over half of his stack already in the process. This hand put me just south of a million chips, where not even 20 minutes earlier I had been sitting on 140k and at my low point of the last several hours of tournament play. Things slowed down a bit after that, but over the remainder of round 3 I won a couple of more big pots and after just the first two hours of play, I was the prohibitive chip leader, with a stack of over 1.6 million. By the second break -- after just four total hours of play -- my stack had swelled to 3.1 million chips, and I entered the final table shortly afterwards with almost three times the table average.

157k to 1.6 million chips over the span of two hours, and on to 3.1 million over the next two. As far as poker tournament heaters go, it hardly gets any better than that. Although there have been a number of fairly triumphant moments in my poker playing life, that incredible run in the Venetian in June 2009 will I'm sure always be the ultimate poker moment to relive for me.

What poker moment would you most like to relive?

Same Tournament, Even Better Result (Big Tournament Win!)

Just four days after taking second out of 1325 runners in the nightly 30k guaranteed on pokerstars earlier in the week, Saturday night brought an even nicer New Years Day present for me, in the very same tournament:



After begging out of doing an old-style tournament recap for that $4000+ win because I was pissed to have come in second place after nabbing a 2-to-1 chip lead in heads-up play but then running into TT and JJ on consecutive hands to give it up, I figured I owe the world one for this one. So here we go, I'm going to kick this one old-school.

For starters, I was up a bit late with the kids on Saturday night as we near the end of what has been the longest time I have been out of the office in a long, long time, probably since I got married 850 years ago. We had another great day, we still have plenty of snow to play with, and we were watching the end of one of K and M's favorite movies, which ran a bit late and as a result I didn't even touch my computer all day long until shortly after 8pm ET. After checking email and a few other standard internet update things, I surveyed the online poker scene and quickly decided I would run that $27.50 buyin, 30k guaranteed nightly tournament on pokerstars that I had just posted about the other day. As I mentioned previously, this isn't a tournament that I have spent a ton of time playing in my day, as the 8pm nightlies in general have not been kind to me as a rule -- I think I've only final tabled that 35k on full tilt one time in my lifetime of maybe 250 attempts playing it -- but in general the fields of the mid buyin mtts on stars are very soft, and given the timing and the fact that nowadays I'm too old and tired to run the 9pm and 10pm mtt's like I once used to with regularity, the 30k looked as good as any. I registered late around 8:20pm, and away we went.

The balance of my first hour in the tournament on Saturday was largely uneventful. I actually was dealt pocket Aces once, and in the big blind no less, but sadly the action folded around to me and I got the oh-so-awesome pocket Aces walk. By the end of Hour 1, I was down a bit from my 3000-chip starting stack, and in 720th place out of 997 players remaining:



I got below 2000 chips not too far into Hour 2, and things were looking like just your standard never-got-anything-going effort that would shortly end with me pushing too hard with a less than premium hand in an attempt to either get back to a relevant stack or bust out and move on to something better. But then about 90 minutes in, I got my first big hand of the night when a guy with pocket Jacks tried to get fancy and check an all-connected flop of 567 when I had raised preflop with T9s and he had just called. Fancy Play Syndrome came back to get him bigtime though, when a miracle 8 fell on the turn, I led out and he quickly pushed:



As you can see a third guy also came along for the ride, and all of a sudden we had ourselves a game as I got right back into the thick of things with a nice workable stack:



6570 chips, good for 224th place out of the 817 remaining runners of the 1425 who had begun the event just about an hour and a half earlier. Nothing to write home about, but at least a situation where I could make some moves instead of slowly dwindle away to nothing.

I got up over 8k shortly before the second break when I raised allin preflop against five limpers for 500 chips apiece, holding 97s. With a really big stack of course I would not likely want to risk losing my position on a move like this, but in this case, still at the time sitting just right at average in chips with under 6000, I like the move and frankly I would not have minded getting a call with a hand like 97s with which I have had a fair amount of success over time. Even AK calling me there gives me the right odds to make a run at a large stack and significant chip utility, but in this case all folded and that bumped me up a nice bit, clearly the best outcome given my cards.

My next big hand was a stone cold bluff, a pure instinct play like I have talked about against a guy whom I had observed stealing pots left and right with far from optimal hands. I called this guy's preflop raise with 86s, another of these hands I love to see cheap flops with against large stacks where I can really do some damage if I hit, and when the flop came down Q53, my opponent failed to c-bet which I had seen him do repeatedly in the past with any kind of hit on the board. Immediately the bell went off in my head that this guy was weak, so I led out for about 60% of the pot, and he insta-called. Especially given the immediacy of his call, I had him on some kind of speculative hand, maybe a draw, or perhaps a low pair on the flop, and when the Ten on the turn did not help me either, but also did not help any draw and could only make a low pocket pair even less pleased, I figured I had to bet out again and I bet small to make it look like I actually wanted a call with a strong hand:



Surprisingly, my opponent called again, which was unfortunate since I had just about the worst nothing hand imaginable in this spot and had now sunk close to half of my stack in this pot. Still, though, he insta-called me again, and unless it's me doing it, insta-calls hardly ever tend to be very strong hands. Medium pair, maybe 8s or 9s stuck in my head as most likely, but of course who could be sure. When the river brought a harmless 4, that completed no flush, only the most unlikely inside straight draw, and didn't help a middle pair hand, I figured I had gone this far, and I could only win the pot at this point by bluffing, so I pushed 'em in and hoped this guy wasn't willing to go to the mat with what I figured were two overcards on the board:



Thankfully, my read was right and he folded, giving me a huge chip-up, and just seconds later came the second break, with me in great shape compared to where I had been just an hour ago:



Here in 68th of 400-some remaining players, I was for the first time on the night in a position to start ramping up the aggression and pushing people out of pots with preflop raises and reraises. I won a couple of pots with A7 and A6, with KJo and T9o. I also had to fold a couple such hands to reraises that did not give me odds to see flops, and the long and short of it was that I sat around the 13,000 chip mark for most of Hour 3. Just before the break I won about 5k when I turned a straight with AQ and made a guy fold on the river what I think might've been low trips (there were two Kings on board), and at the third break I was back around average again, with a lot of work ahead of me if I was going to make a real run here:



The money bubble broke at 215 players remaining just minutes into Hour 4, with me still right around average in chips but having recorded my second cash in four nights in this particular tournament where I had previously had so little luck over time. My stack jumped to over 30k in chips not too far into Hour 4 when I flopped A75 with A7 from my big blind against the big-stack small blind's A4, the small blind bet into me, I pushed and he strangely called with his top pair crap kicker:



Not that I haven't been on the losing end of blind vs. blind confrontations a million times in my life, but this was not a good call by him. I always try to remind myself these days that, even when you're both in the blinds, sometimes people do get hands in these positions and once you're facing significant action -- in particular after seeing a flop -- if I'm weak (like top pair shit kicker) I am likely going to find myself behind even though it seems unlikely to happen when it's just the blinds battling it out. But it does happen.

Not too long later in Hour 4, I picked up my second premium hand of the night, pocket Aces again, this time in under the gun which I also love. I especially love to limp in this spot, in particular when the stacks are getting short and the Harringbots are generally waiting to try to make a play with middling stacks. I did it here and got just what I wanted from the big blind:



He had A5s -- also not a great play against an under the gun raiser, but then I generally work hard to establish a loose image preflop in these things by betting and raising quite a bit before seeing any of the community cards, so I suppose with a shortish stack I can see his thinking, at least a little bit. It's not a move that I would make with that stack though -- calling I almost certainly could with the flush and straight possibilities of A5s against a big stack, but pushing vs. the utg raiser, that's not really my style with these cards. Still, I'll take it, and after winning the hand I was in my best position so far in the tournament:



21st place out 139 remaining, well into the money positions. Still a long ways to go, but considering I was down below 2000 chips about an hour and a half into this thing, it was a great turn of events for me overall.

And then a guy made a huge mistake here, one that I'm still trying to understand although I will mention again that the pokerstars large mtt fields are notoriously soft:



Obviously I called this, especially given the massive stack of the preflop reraiser here and the chance for me to basically nearly triple up and jump to the very top of the leaderboard. What range do you put the big stack on the left on here, to be putting all of that huge stack at risk in a spot like this? Think it over, and then scroll below for the reveal:












22. I mean, what do you say? I am all for being aggressive, but pushing all of that huge stack in there with such a beatable hand like 22 -- when in fact he knows already that he's no better than 50-50 literally no matter what the original raiser has -- that is a horribad poker play in any tournament. If he had a much smaller stack and needed to make a move and try to get in there to race for a much-needed double-up, that could make a lot of sense. But from his position, it's just horrible, but it was to my advantage, as suddenly I had completed my transition from the bottom quarter of the field 90 minutes in all the way to the tippy top of the leaderboard:



I got up to just over 125k late in Hour 4 when my JJ held up against a shortish stack's KQo allin preflop, which at that point was good for 3rd place out of 96 runners remaining. Early in Hour 5, I encountered another strange hand that saw me really go out on a limb based more or less just on my instinct about my opponent for the second time on the night. I was down to around 10th place of 80 or so remaining with around 110k in chips and I called a preflop raise from another top-ten stack with my JTs on the button. I then called my opponent's c-bet on the favorable J44 flop of around half the pot, based partly on having seen my opponent fold to flop raises on c-bets before at this table when he had insta-bet his continuation bet and having seen him bet out very quickly here as well. When the turn gave me two pairs -- albeit vulnerable, if my opponent had a higher pocket pair since there was also a pair of 4s on the board, he checked and I bet out, and suddenly I faced this check-raise which threatened to deplete my stack as it came from the only guy at the table who could stack me:



It's hard to say exactly why I stayed in the pot at this point. I knew that if he had QQ, KK or AA, I was dead, and he had raised preflop and called my bet on the flop, and then raised me on the turn. And yet, I just could not reconcile such a big hand with his instant c-bet on the flop. Think about it: when you have AA, do you instantly c-bet on a non-scary flop like J44? Or do you pause briefly, so as not to betray the strength of your holding to your opponent? All I knew was that in this case, he did not seem like he was on a big premium pair, and otherwise that turn card left me in very good shape against a guy who had raised it up preflop if he was not holding QQ-AA. So I called. When the river brought a harmless offsuit 5, my opponent against insta-pushed for all his remaining chips, and at that point I could not have been more sure that he was weak. I knew I was taking a chance, but if he was so good as to insta-push here after insta-raising on the turn with a big pocket pair, then so be it, I was willing to go home. I called for my stack, and saw this:



A busted draw. A big one, mind you, but still a busted draw. A preflop raise with Q9s, a standard c-bet bluff which I was spot-on in pegging as a bluff due to how instantaneously he bet the chips, and then another player on a huge stack who failed to protect and instead just got a little too aggressive with a large draw on a turn card that also happened to give me top two pairs. And with this hand, I vaulted well into the chip lead, a lead I would hold for a long time coming:



I pushed it up to 280k over the next little while when my 99 outran a shorty's ATo, and then I flopped trips with KTs against a guy who couldn't lay down QQ and I was up over 325k, good for the chip lead with 54 players remaining. Later in Hour 5 my rush continued as I flopped my second set of the night and won a bunch more chips against a guy who couldn't let go of top pair top kicker:



And I really had a huge chiplead:



And as you can imagine if you know how I play, at this point I got downright nasty with the betting and raising, in particular preflop. I folded a couple of times to reraises in bad spots for me, but otherwise I quickly raised more or less every time the action folded around to me preflop, and I really terrorized the table. I was atop the leaderboard with 50 left, and remained there with 40 left, as well as with 30 remaining, and still with 20 runners left, all the while maintaining my stack in the 400k-500k range by my relentless stealing of pots both pre- and post-flop. Here is the board with 20 players remaining, with me having just crossed the 500k mark for the first time:



And here I am at the sixth break, down to 16 players left, two tables of eight players each:



I finally lost the chip lead for the first time since nearly 70 players left when we got down to 13, and someone jumped up over 750k on the other table, but I was still in good shape. I got as low as 5th place on a few occasions, but again I never allowed myself to get short nor did I allow myself to make a dumb call and risk my shot at making right my bad beats from the other day in this same tournament. Finally, after the standard set of ridiculous bubble suckouts to keep things going much longer than they should have, eventually the short stack ran his 77 into KK, and we were back to the final table:



I was starting in 4th place of 9 remaining, but again was in good shape and had been sure to spend the previous hour or so actively watching both of the remaining tables to pick up trends on how everyone played the game. Maybe 10 minutes in to the final table, I took advantage of a guy I had picked on before with large bets and raises, when he clearly had a big pocket pair, I called him preflop with 98s, and promptly flopped trip 9s. Although just as he had previously, he ended up folding to my large raise on the turn, I got a bunch of his chips and climbed into 2nd place at the final table as my stack jumped over 700k for the first time.

Unfortunately, I lost my biggest pot of the tournament when I correctly read my opponent across the table for not having an Ace when the flop came Ace high, got him to give me over a third of his stack on the flop and turn, but then he sickly rivered a boat out of nowhere and I paid him off being totally unable to read him for what had just happened here:



Still, luckily I had buit up and maintained such a nice stack over the previous couple of hours that I was able to withstand this sick river loss without it seriously hampering my chances to stay viable in the tournament. A few hands later we lost our first final table player, a short stack whose KTs ran into KQ and could not catch, and we were down to 8. Having observed the guy at the other table over the past hour or two stealing repeatedly from the button before the flop, I was able to take repeated advantage of this knowledge at the final table to start climbing back up the leaderboard by restealing multiple times with preflop reraises whenever the player drawn to sit to my left at the final table tried to steal a pot away from me before the flop, which got me back up over 600k pretty quickly as I tried to take the momentum back after my hideous rivering. Meanwhile, the new shorty finally busted after having sucked out about five times during the final two tables when his K9 was called by AK pre, and then there were 7, with me at the time in 5th place with 506k in chips, but still within 20% or so of 3rd place and 30% of 2nd place, and I sat just a bit lower than this as we came to the sixth break in the tournament:



Just minutes into Hour Seven, the tournament short stack reraised me allin preflop when I held AKo, which is just about the most obvious call in the world, and I was pissed to see him flop a set and take away most of my hard-earned stack that I had fought hard and played great poker to amass over the past several hours:




This hand now left me a distant 6th out of 7 players remaining, and once again my prospects for righting my wrong in this tournament from earlier in the week were dimming considerably. I knew I needed to try to find a spot to win back a chunk of chips to get myself a stack that I could push people out of pots with, instead of one that the big stacks could call down even at the risk of taking a loss and still being in good shape. On the very next hand, the opportunity presented itself here, when a very active stealer who had been busted stealing several times over the past two or three hours I had played with him put in his standard button steal before the flop, and then the tournament big stack went for the resteal, a move he had done with increasing frequency over the past hour or so as his stack had grown and grown at the expense of the rest of us, making me think that neither one of them was particularly strong here:



I knew I would be racing, but I figured the first raiser would fold to the second raiser's action and huge stack, and I would have a chance to race to get right back into the thick of things in a spot where the big stack could not really consider folding to my allin re-reraise. So I pushed allin, willing to go busto in 6th place and take the loss after my AK could not hold against the short stack's 99 in the hand previous, and I saw that my reads could not have been more off, and I was actually in serious trouble:



Scarcely had I had time to scream out "22222!" in my head when the world's most glorious flop hit the board:



And whaddya know, all of a sudden my fortunes had shifted from an 85% dog to finish out of the tournament in 6th place, to sitting on my biggest stack of the night and solidly in 2nd place with 5 runners left in the 30k. I couldn't believe it, but then this is pokerstars so you can't really disbelieve anything when it comes down to it. The two things I knew for sure though were (1) my reasoning had been sound on the hand -- admittedly I knew I would be called by the big stack and was thus willingly choosing to race, but there was a method to my madness and I was fully willing to race for my shot to either bust in 6th or climb right back into it, and (2) even more importantly, I was absolutely determined not to let this huge final table suckout to my benefit go to waste. The table was pissed at me, they all thought I was a huge donkey, and I was going to take this ridiculous gift to the bank come hell or high water. And that is exactly what I did, as the action got fast and furious pretty quickly after we lost our 6th man standing at the final table.

On the very next hand after my reflonkulous suckout, I was dealt 99 in the small blind, and when the cutoff -- another active stealer who has won a number of large-field tournaments in his day -- raised it up, I chose to just call, figuring that the aggro guy I mentioned earlier to my left was highly likely to push with any strong holding given his short stack at the time. And that's exactly what happened:



I could not get in there fast enough with my 99 and a big stack once again, and I managed to outrun his ATo to knock it down to five players remaining and take over the slight chip lead for the first time in the better part of an hour:



And then came my favorite hand of the tournament. The super-aggro big stack to my immediate right raised it up preflop as he had almost every single time the action folded around to him at the final table, and I just called with 76s, the kind of hand I just love to take up against other big stacks because it's a stacking kind of hand when it comes to my opponent's stack if I hit it hard, but I have high confidence that I can get away from it before it stacks me if I don't. We, the two prohibitively large stacks of the 5 players left at the final table, saw a heads-up flop of Q57 with two of my suit, giving me a bunch of outs as well as middle pair which could easily already be ahead on this flop. Still, I didn't want to get too crazy before hitting something better with the hand, but short of the rare straight or flush flop, this flop was close to as good as it gets with this kind of starting cards. When the big stack guy bet out just under half the pot, I briefly considered raising a semi-bluff to conceal the nature of my hand, but again opted for some pot control and just called, not wanting to get blown out of this pot before I had a chance to hit something big:



My flush completed on the turn with the beautiful Ace of diamonds, and when my opponent checked to me I basically knew there was no way he could have a higher flush (how could you ever fail to bet again there if you were on the come and filled on the turn, if you're any kind of a thinking player at all?), but since it was an Ace and I figured that was the most likely card in the deck to have hit my opponent's hand, I wanted to bet out here on the turn, mostly to help build the pot so that a river bet could get really huge and potentially win me this tournament right here and now. I bet out 188k into the 250k pot, judging that would be sufficient to justify all the chips going into the middle on the river, and my opponent called again. When the Queen of spades fell on the river, I nearly creamed in my pants. Now, if he was on an Ace he had gotten help, and if he was on a Queen for top pair that had him calling twice here, I knew there was no way he was folding. Figuring that anything other than an Ace or a Queen would surely fold to any size bet, and either of those cards was likely to call no matter how much I bet, I tried to appear as weak as possible by instantly pushing allin for the rest of my stack on the river:



And my opponent couldn't fall over himself fast enough to call:



After his last 20k in chips were eliminated on the very next hand when I had to fold 55 to a reraise from across the table, we were down to 4 players left, with me holding a ridiculously large chip lead of 2.5 to 1, 3 to 1 and 5 to 1 over the three remaining players, holding approximately 50% of the chips in play:



I raised and reraised these guys like pigs from here on out, having little chance of seriously hurting myself with any preflop action as long as I didn't allow it to get too big, and my stack climbed slowly but surely as a result. Not too long after, the short stack's 66 held up allin preflop against another player's AJo, and suddenly I had basically a 3-to-1 chip lead over each of the other three players remaining. Which did little to faze me, as I just continued raising preflop with basically any two cards, almost every single hand, just daring somebody to push back at me at which point I could make a decision of whether or not to allow the pot to grow to a threatening size in terms of my stack. I was raising so much, and very obviously so, that I also had the luxury of knowing that these guys were going to be pushing back on me fairly light, since they knew my raising range was essentially ATC here. So, when I faced this situation and a chance to knock it down to three players in a situation when I was most likely racing, I clearly had the stack to take the chance in a spot where I was likely a slight favorite:



I held:



and then there were three, with my chip lead still roughly 3 to 1 over the 2nd place guy, and more like 7 to 1 over the shorty who all through the tournament was just a little too tight for his own good. And so I just resumed raising ATC preflop, winning pots with A5o:



with T9s:



with K4o:



with 86o:



with Q7o:



and finally, when I faced a very similar situation with the short stack as when I had eliminated #4 about 5 minutes earlier, I knew I easily had the stack once again to take a chance where I was likely a slight favorite to take this thing down to heads up:



Once again I held up against A9o, and we were back to heads up:



Only this time, instead of starting out as a more than 2 to 1 dog in chips, I would be starting with a massive chip lead of more than 4 to 1, against a guy I knew I was better than, and who I especially knew I was better than in terms of final table, heads-up type of experience:



I raised pretty actively preflop, absolutely determined not to double this guy up and let him get a chunk of that chip deficit back, but equally determined not to let up and make him push allin on me whenever he wanted to see any kind of a flop. I won 7 out of 11 hands heads up, seeing just two flops along the way, and I folded crap hands twice to preflop reraises from him where I was sure I was not getting the odds to just call with ATC, despite my big stack relative to his. This is somewhere that I see people F themselves up all the time late in tournaments, as many players seem to think that having "enough chips to afford it" equates with calling with ATC just to take a chance at eliminating someone and getting closer to their goal. I have to laugh whenever I see people do that -- and again I see it all the time -- because in reality you are playing directly into your opponent's hand if you play that way with a big stack late in a tournament. Believe me, there is nothing that the guy at a 4 to 1 chip deficit wants more than for you to call his allins light. He needs you to call his allins light! The way you make sure you give yourself the best chance to beat a guy in this position is just the opposite -- you can punish him relentlessly with comparatively small pots before the flop, but you simply do not allow him to get into a big pot with you unless you believe you have the best of it, ever. That's the secret to play late with a big stack, and although it may seem obvious to some, I would estimate that 75% of players I run into in your average large-field mtt on the major sites seem to play the opposite and get very itchy trigger fingers with a big stack late in these events.

In any event, by raising this guy relentlessly I managed to increase my chip lead to more than 5 to 1 after 22 hands of heads-up play here:



and then finally, on hand 31 of our heads-up matchup, I raised again preflop, telling my opponent absolutely nothing about my hand given how ridiculously aggro I had been over the previous several minutes of play, and then I faced this decision for all the marbles:



Having a 9 kicker to go along with my Ace, meaning that I was ahead of more than half of the possible Aces, and any non-paired holdings not including an Ace, plus racing against any pocket pair 8s or lower -- all of which it was obvious were well within my opponent's allin range here given my activity up to this point and the chip stacks involved, I just didn't see how I could fold here. I was indeed a roughly 58% favorite, needing to hold just one more time to take this bad boy down:



The flop was clean -- all rags -- and the turn as well, and I knew I was looking at fading six outs once to win it all, and boom!



I had won the tournament!



This once again is among the most satisfying victories I have had in a long time in online poker, partially because I had just failed to close the deal four days earlier in this very same tourament, and partially just because it's on pokerstars in general where I had such little success in tournaments in 2010. I survived a couple of brutal riverings along the way in this thing, and consistent with my 2011 poker goals, I was sure not to let them get in the way of playing with a clear head, and playing my best game to win. In fact, lateish in this tournament, I took two brutal beats back to back on Ultimate Bet to go from 3rd of 26 runners left in their nightly 8pm ET tournament to busto in 22nd place (cash at 18th place), and still I did not let it affect my play in this tournament. This is what I need to do more often in 2011 without a doubt, and last week's run in this tourney combined especially with this weekend's show just how much I can be successful if applied correctly. Although I botched a couple of reads over a 7-hour period, I made good, sound decisions literally from start to finish in this thing, and I held up just enough -- and got super lucky when I needed to one time at the final table -- to take it down and get exactly where I wanted to be over 7 1/2 hours of play. I couldn't be happier with how 2010 ended and how 2011 has begun for me on the virtual felt, and I look forward to taking my newfound focus in mtt's back to the tables on a nightly basis heading into the new year.