Recent Live Tournament Play, and the WSOP Circuit

So. I've played some poker here and there over the past few months -- maybe four or five tournaments in total, spread out over a few different venues and a few different buyin levels. In general, the story has been the same when I have played lately: lose some early as I play too loose with subpar cards trying to hit a big flop, then find a way to survive, and eventually chip up enough to last through the halfway point of the field. But then, by the time around two-thirds of the field is gone, invariably I find myself short-stacked as I just have not had the cards to be able to win some big showdowns, nor sufficient sack to push as much as I obviously have to be doing in big pots even I know I do not have the best hand. Eventually I try to make a move that is a pretty obvious play given my short stack, I get caught, and I'm out short of the money positions. I'm playing ok poker early on in these events, but I seem to be consistently just not amassing enough chips in the early and middle stages to have enough chip utility to really play poker in the final third of the tournament.

I've written about this many times, but I know why this is happening. I just don't play enough poker anymore. This did not used to be my problem when playing in live tournaments. In general I am surely a much better live player today than I ever was four or five years ago showing up in a casino and hoping to get nailed with the deck like never before. But when it comes down to it, as I've described previously, I can literally feel my instincts being off almost every time I sit down to play these days. I just don't have near that feel for when to push em all in, for when I can take down a big pot with a large bluff, that I know I used to have all the time, and that you simply need to have more attuned than I do these days if you're going to run deep. Short of that awesome deck-smacking I mentioned above, it's the only way to survive deep enough with a big enough stack to make a real run, and I simply have not been able to do that, for months on end, at the poker table.

It's sad, really. Unlike so many crappy players out there, I actually know what I'm supposed to be doing, at least in general terms. I am conscious sitting there at the table that I am not stealing enough, that I should probably bluff this guy here because I know he is bluffing himself and his bet has made the pot a good size. And I just know when other people are doing that move to me, making me lay down with what I am fairly sure is a bluff. But am I going to call them down with AK high just to try to prove them wrong? Am I going to bust early from a tournament with zero pairs, just to try to catch a bluffer who has made a small pot into a big one by firing barrel after barrel, good money after bad?

I've also mentioned this before, but one thing that is clear as a bell from my recent live play is that I play much tighter than the rest of the table post flop. The bottom line is, there are very few scenarios where I would call an allin with just one pair -- any pair, even slow-played pocket Aces -- early in a tournament. Period. Now, I'm never saying never here. But it's just not my thing, busting out from a tournament in the early stages, with less than probably top two pair, or at least top pair and something else very solid. Another pair, a huge draw, something. But I cannot tell you how many times I watch people get it allin with just TPTK, with just the Ace-King on the Ace-high flop, all the way through the first few hours of these large tournaments. And the amazing thing is, these clowns who call down with TPTK seem to be right more often than they're wrong! I just can't believe it. Similarly, I couldn't count the number of true "hero calls" I've seen guys make in the early rounds, calling down a guy they're sure is bluffing, with just their pocket 7s or whatever it is. Again, I seem to see an inordinate number of those guys who end up proving to be right when they do make the call, but in my mind that does not make this a good play necessarily. I mean, who calls down with pocket 7s for all their chips at the river against a guy you are 50% sure is totally bluffing with nothing, very early in a tournament? How do you do that? Can that really be a good play in an early-tournament context? Very rarely, it seems to me. And yet, I see it all the time in these things. All. The. Time.

I'm sure that learning to make donkey calls with weak hands for huge chips based on a hunch is not really what my game is missing these days in order to be able to amass a real stack by the midpoint of one of these tournaments. And yet, it's got to be something. It's too much of a pattern for me not to notice it when I apply my objectivity to the situation. I'm definitely not being aggressive enough, and even though I know that going in and choose to make it a focus, in the heat of the moment I am just not finding the situations where I'm comfortable making a move with nearly the frequency as I think I need to in order to keep up with the table.

Will I go to Las Vegas this summer to play in the World Series of Poker again, after taking my first year off in five last summer? That is maybe up in the air at this point -- though ultimately the choice will be up to me -- but one thing I definitely do plan to do is try to sit in at least one or two other larger tournament fields before the summertime, to get that old feeling back and really to see if I can hone my skills sufficiently so that I do feel like I have enough of a chance to drop the buyins on a WSOP tournament or two this year. I'm not making any rules for myself as far as having to cash in this-or-that tournament or I won't go to Vegas, or having to win my buyin in cash games in order to play in the desert this summer, nothing silly like that. However, I do want to get myself into a real big tournament setting once or twice, and see how I perform "under the spotlight" so to speak, before I make any decisions about Vegas and the World Series.

To that end, the WSOP Circuit is coming to Caesars Atlantic City -- a poker room which I have frequented several times over the past few years -- from March 1-14 of this year, and I intend to be there to sit for at least one of the events of that series. Ideally I would play an event over a weekend, with either a Friday or a Monday built in, so I could play and only take off one day from work to do it, as most of the WSOP Circuit events are two-day events. And although the one-day jobs are always easier and more efficient for me to play in, I think I'd like to get involved in another 2-day event, and give myself yet another try to make just my second-ever Day Two in a live tournament, which to this day is still among my greatest personal embarrassments when it comes to poker tournaments. So here is the schedule for the WSOP-C at Caesars:

2011/2012 WSOP Circuit Event - Caesars Atlantic City


Thu, Mar 1st
12:00 PM
2-Day Event Event #1: No-Limit Hold'em
Official WSOP Circuit Ring Event; Counts in points standings. $345

Thu, Mar 1st
5:00 PM
1-Day Event Main Event Mega Satellites through March 3rd (Non-Ring Event)
Satellite to the Caesars Atlantic City WSOP Circuit Main Event on Saturday, March 10. No 5pm Mega Satellite will be held on Thursday, March 8th. $190

Thu, Mar 1st
7:00 PM
1-Day Event Nightly 7PM No-Limit Hold'em Tournaments through March 12th (Non-Ring Event)
No 7PM nightlies will be held Friday, March 9th through Sunday, March 11th. $200

Fri, Mar 2nd
12:00 PM
3-Day Event Event #2A: No-Limit Hold'em Re-Entry
Re-entry event. Players eliminated in 2A may re-enter in 2B. Official WSOP Circuit Ring Event; Counts in points standings. $345

Sat, Mar 3rd
12:00 PM
2-Day Event Event #2B: No-Limit Hold'em Re-Entry
Re-entry event. Players eliminated in 2A may re-enter in 2B. Official WSOP Circuit Ring Event; Counts in points standings. $345

Sun, Mar 4th
12:00 PM
2-Day Event Event #3: No-Limit Hold'em
Official WSOP Circuit Ring Event; Counts in points standings. $555

Mon, Mar 5th
12:00 PM
2-Day Event Event #4: No-Limit Hold'em
Official WSOP Circuit Ring Event; Counts in points standings. $345

Tue, Mar 6th
12:00 PM
2-Day Event Event #5: No-Limit Hold'emOfficial WSOP Circuit Ring Event; Counts in points standings. $555

Wed, Mar 7th
12:00 PM
2-Day Event Event #6: No-Limit Hold'em Six Handed
Official WSOP Circuit Ring Event; Counts in points standings. $345

Thu, Mar 8th
12:00 PM
2-Day Event Event #7: No-Limit Hold'em
Official WSOP Circuit Ring Event; Counts in points standings. $345

Thu, Mar 8th
5:00 PM
2-Day Event Event #8: Limit Omaha Eight or Better
Official WSOP Circuit Ring Event; Counts in points standings. $345

Fri, Mar 9th
12:00 PM
2-Day Event Event #9: No-Limit Hold'em
Official WSOP Circuit Ring Event; Counts in points standings. $1,080

Fri, Mar 9th
7:00 PM
1-Day Event Main Event Mega Satellite (Non-Ring Event)
Satellite to the Caesars Atlantic City WSOP Circuit Main Event on Saturday, March 10th. $190

Sat, Mar 10th
11:00 AM
3-Day Event Event #10A: No-Limit Hold'em Main Event
Re-entry event. Players eliminated in 10A may re-enter in 10B. Official WSOP Circuit Ring Event; Counts in points standings. $1,600

Sat, Mar 10th
5:00 PM
1-Day Event Ladies No-Limit Hold'em Event (Non-Ring Event)
$230

Sat, Mar 10th
7:00 PM
3-Day Event Event #10B: No-Limit Hold'em Main Event
Re-entry event. Players eliminated in 10A may re-enter in 10B. Official WSOP Circuit Ring Event; Counts in points standings. $1,600

Sun, Mar 11th
12:00 PM
2-Day Event Event #11: No-Limit Hold'em
Official WSOP Circuit Ring Event; Counts in points standings. $345

Sun, Mar 11th
5:00 PM
1-Day Event Seniors No-Limit Hold'em Event (Non-Ring Event)
$230

Sun, Mar 11th
7:00 PM
1-Day Event Road to the Main Event: 2012 WSOP Main Event Satellite (Non-Ring Event)
Satellite to the 2012 WSOP Main Event at the Rio All-Suites Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, NV $550

Mon, Mar 12th
12:00 PM
1-Day Event Event #12: No-Limit Hold'em Turbo
Official WSOP Circuit Ring Event; Counts in points standings. $345

Mon, Mar 12th
5:00 PM
1-Day Event Road to the Main Event: 2012 WSOP Main Event Satellite (Non-Ring Event)
$1,100


Let me know if anyone thinks any particular event looks good for me, or for you. If anyone in the area (or who can be in the area) is thinking about attending any of these tournaments, let me know and maybe we can meet up there together. Although I have some inclinations about which event to play and when, I am generally flexible as long as they decisions are made fairly soon as opposed to at the very last minute. Preliminarily, I am thinking about that $345 re-entry Event 2A/2B on the first weekend of the series, Event #9 which is the $1080 buyin nlh tournament on the second Friday, or even Event #11, the $345 nlh event on the second Sunday of the weekend. The Turbo one-day event is also a possibility, although as I mentioned I am more interested right now in playing in a more WSOP-like two-day event to try to get myself in as close to a WSOP situation as I am likely to find.

Anybody else planning to play any of the WSOP Circuit tournaments at Caesar's in a few weeks?

Thoughts From the Borgata Fall Poker Open (Part II) -- The Big Hand

Yesterday I wrote about my fairly deep run in the Borgata Fall Poker Open black-chip bounty event, where I ended up busting just short of the final table at the hands of a vicious suckout. I was fortunate enough to have played in the tournament with two fellow fun poker bloggers, Edgie and the beautiful Josie. Although I had read his blog before and seen some comments on my own and others' blogs, this was my first time meeting Edgie (Jeff), which I managed to do over a quick bite during dinner break at the Borgata's food court just below the poker room. Jeff was a super nice guy, and more than that, a very solid poker player as well as he followed up a $9100 score earlier this month on bodog by final tabling the very same tournament that I played in. Despite us both outlasting more than 98% of the field in this event, Jeff and I never got to play at the same table, but Josie was kind enough to give me updates on Jeff's progress throughout the afternoon, and it sounded like Jeff was off to a nice big stack early, and that within minutes after the dinner break, his stack multiplied several times and set him up nicely for a final table run.

I should mention as well that Josie, who busted shortly before the first break in this tournament, came into the event flush in the pocketbook as she had managed to win not, not two but three buyins at the 2-5 nl cash tables the night before at the Borgata's always-active cash tables. I can honestly say that I have never won anything close to $1500 in cash poker of any level at any one sitting, and Josie having been able to pull that feat off is a testament to her abilities as a cash player in addition to her known tournament prowess which includes her own final table the last time I played at a live tournament with her, at Foxwoods a few months back. There is definitely something awesome about a woman who can kill you in both cash and tournament poker, and even though Josie was done in early by pocket Kings in the Borgata black-chip bounty tournament this time around, she cleared well into the four figures overall for her three-day trip to Atlantic City last week thanks largely to the cash tables, a result any of us would envy, and I have to say Josie was a great resource for me last week to discuss hands, to listen to my many complaints from bad cards to bad seat position through the tournament, and generally just to take a break from the stress of hand after hand of increasingly crucial situations.

Anyways, a belated congratulations to Edgie for his Borgata final table in what I can personally attest was a grueling field, and to Josie for destroying the cash tables at a level higher than her normal 1-2 cash play also at the Borgata last week.

OK, so back to the tournament. When I left you yesterday, I had referenced that, although my poker instincts were fairly far from sharp in the tournament, I did make a couple of big folds that, like mostly ever deep mtt run I have ever had, did more to keep me in the tournament than basically any hand I did play throughout the day. Despite not getting many strong hands for several hours to begin the tournament, I did have to fold AQs about four hours in, in the only time I saw this hand on the day, to a raise and a reraise in front of me before the flop. I have simply found that I have done well folding AQ -- sooted or otherwise -- to almost any preflop reraise, which generally speaking indicates either AK or a pair of Queens through Aces in the pocket probably a good 75% of the time or more in my experience.

An even bigger preflop fold, albeit also something which I have learned over the years the discipline to do with some regularity, was when I also laid down JJ preflop, about which happened several hours in, about 2/3 of the way through the field. In that hand, I was getting fairly short, back down to around 15 big blinds (where frankly I spent most of the day's action), and I hadn't played a hand in about an hour, so I was getting antsy to make some kind of play. You can imagine my excitement when I looked down to find pocket Jacks in the big blind, and even moreso when the action folded halfway around before the flop, and then a fairly aggressive stealer open-raised it up a few seats to my right. I had already decided I was going to reraise allin any preflop raiser from any position with my shortish stack and pocket Jacks, and when half the players folded and then the pot was opened by a guy with a weak image already, that all but sealed it. But then to my dismay and disappointment, a very tight player who was also sitting on a big stack reraised on the button, after also not playing a hand in the past hour or so, and that really changed the whole calculus for me. I mean, I needed the chips bad, but as much as I wanted to get some action with my pocket Jacks, I was not about to call for 2/3 of my stack or push allin against a tight preflop reraiser with pocket Jacks. Especially given the reraiser's large stack, my perception was that he would not risk all of those chips with a few players still to act behind him without a very strong holding, and so, after a minute or so of thought, I grudgingly but confidently laid the JJ down. The guy to my right went on to show AA when the original stealer also folded to his preflop reraise. Much later, the guy to my right would go on to win the entire tournament.

But my biggest fold on the day was not before the flop, but on the flop, and it also happened to be the biggest pot I saw in the entire 13 hours I played in the tournament. Here's how the action went:

For starters, the guy to my immediate right (a different guy from the hand above) had just lost an allin pot from his big blind to a guy across the table who had only about 400 chips fewer than he had, leaving the guy next to me with just that many chips at a time when the blinds were I think 400-800 with a 75 ante. Being that he was also the small blind in the hand in question, this guy was thus allin blind with his last chips in the middle to start the hand. Which meant that his $100 elimination bounty was totally up for grabs. Which meant that everyone around the table would be playing like complete and utter maniacs to try to get his bounty, as always seems to happen whenever a cash bounty is on the line in one of these bounty tournaments. And that's the setup for the biggest pot I saw on the day. Oh, and did I mention that, as this hand began, we had the two largest chip stacks left in the tournament both at my table? One, the actual chip leader at the time, was on my immediate left (I spent pretty much the entire last 8 hours of this tournament with the chip leader on my immediate left, through two different tables in fact), and was sitting on approximately 125,000 in chips, at a time when my paltry stack (as it was most of the day) was around 14,000 (which was really fun for me, in case you're wondering). And another guy across the way had about 120,000 in chips in his stack, good for #2 at the time in the tournament, also seated at our table even though we had about 60 runners left in the event.

So, with the setup out of the way, the small blind was allin with the last of his chips, and his bounty chip in the middle in front of him, and I was the big blind in the hand. The UTG player and tournament chipleader with 125,000 chips started off the action by min-raising, in a weakass, half-hearted attempt to take the guy head-on for his bounty, but the weak minraise to just 1600 chips did nothing of the sort and instead led the UTG+1 player to call, then the guy next to him folded, and then the next 4 players also called the 1600-chip raise. I looked down in the big blind to find 97s, a hand which I would have open-raised with myself and which I would have probably called most small raises with even in a heads-up pot (certainly against the chipleader), so I of course called the raise as well for another 800 chips out of my stack with 97s, and we saw a 7-way flop -- with the small blind and his bounty already allin and up for grabs -- by far the most players to any hand I saw in my entire 13-hour run on the day.

And the flop came down...949 rainbow. My heart jumped to my throat. I mean, of course a nut straight or a flush would be even better flops for me, but in general I had nailed this flop -- far and away the best flop hit over made in the entire day, mind you -- and I was in the big blind to boot, in a hand with two ginormously-stacked players who had been very aggressively pushing people around already to get those huge stacks.

I checked, as I had checked almost every flop I had seen throughout the day and I just didn't see the point of betraying any strength in my hand and possibly chasing anyone out with all these chips available on the table. My thought was that someone would surely bet this flop out of the 7 players in the hand (6 with chips behind), and then I would most likely reraise allin almost any bet from any player and take my chances. The chipleader opened the betting to my immediate left, but with a shocking bet of 20,000 chips. This was about a fifth of his entire monster stack, and more than that, it was enough right out of the gate to basically cover the entire stack or nearly the entire stack of every single other player in the hand at the time, except for the #2 stack across the table. That did not please me to have to call an allin instead of having some fold equity into what was a pot with under 10k in chips in it at the time, but at the same time, this guy was an aggro monster and the size of the bet made him seem more weak than strong to me, so my plan was still to call his allin when the action got around to me.

There was a fold, then another fold, and another, and my plan was really crystallizing in my head. But then a crazy thing happened. The other ginormous stack in the tournament called the 20k bet. He didn't even raise it, mind you, but he just smooth called the bet for 20k, now putting a silly amount of chips into the pot, and then the action folded around to me. As I stared at the obscene action going on in this hand, my plan to get it allin started to crumble right before my eyes. I mean, one guy pushing in a huge bet as an aggro steal play when he had the chips to lose was one thing, but for both of the big stacks to be committing tournament-altering amounts of chips here -- and in particular with the guy across the way only calling and not reraising allin to even try to get the big stack to lay down -- those alarm bells I often write about started going off in my head. Something just did not feel right here. I thought. I analyzed. I agonized. Suddenly, my trips with the 7 kicker were feeling pretty well outkicked. Again, if either one of these guys had alone made a big move at this pot, I'm probably sliding 'em all in there and taking my chances, especially given that I was below average like I was the entire day long in the tournament, and if my 97 is beat, then it's beat. But once the enormity of the pot I was looking at really sunk in, I just sat in disbelief as the fingers on my right hand slid my cards face-down towards the muck in the center of the table. I was behind, I had to be.

The turn card brought an offsuit King, making the board 949K rainbow, and the big stack to my left insta-pushed allin for a gillion chips. And the guy across the way beat him into the pot calling the bet. For his entire 2nd place stack. Against the one and only player in the entire room who had the power to eliminate him. This of course left me all the more sure that I was in fact behind.

Anybody care to guess what the two players had? I can post the results on Wednesday but will give some time for people to get in their guesses if they want to.

Suffice it to say, the winner of this pot went on to be such a massive chipleader and hold more than 300 big blinds at this point in the tournament, which is something I have never even seen before in my entire life of live or online tournament play.

Let me know your guesses, and I will post the results tomorrow. Also, I would like to understand if anyone thinks I should have called the action here and taken my chances with my 97s, and if so, based on what reasoning.

Thoughts From the Borgata Fall Poker Open -- Part I

That's right -- an actual poker post ahead!!

So I went and played in the Borgata Fall Poker Open last week. Long story short, I made a nice run, played about 13 hours in a one-day event, and lasted through more than 98% of the field before being eliminated just short of the final table. The event I played was a bounty event, and I managed to pick up 6 elimination bounties -- more than covering my full buyin for the event as it was -- plus a small four-figure cash for finishing in 11th place on the day. Although I lost the vast majority of my stack on a dominated suckout that took me out of the tournament instead of vaulting me into the top half of the final table, for reasons I will describe below, I did not and do not feel I had much right to complain about that, and complain about that suckout I will not.

The interesting thing was, I really did not play very well in this tournament. It's not all that usual, but I've definitely had a number of these sorts of runs over my career back in the online poker days, days where I never really get it together, my reads are not really all that perfect, I make some mistakes, but somehow manage to survive through them and make a nice run. But I really did not play very well in this event, and my total lack of current experience playing the game really showed in my opinion, in a lot of different ways.

For starters, I got very little in the way of cards for the first several hours in this tournament, but I handled that fact much more poorly than is necessary for any aspiring successful poker tournament player. Like, I got no good starting cards. At. All. My first six hands of the tournament all had a 2 in them, and 9 out of my first 10. I could not believe it. That's about as bad of a beginning run as one could ever imagine for sure (what are the odds? 2/13 of having a 2 in any given hand, right? so 6 in a row to start is 2/13 to the 6th power, right? For those keeping score, that is 0.0000136, or 13 in a million for those less math-inclined), and that's not even counting that the next three hands after my 7th hand did not include a 2, also had 2s in them again. But aside from the astonishing math behind this occurrence, I handled this horrific string of starting cards as poorly as could be imagined. I mean, here i was having driven two hours to play this tournament with some blogger friends, and here I was completely tilted out of my mind after what, 30 minutes of play? And I hadn't even gotten sucked out on, or even lost a pot yet for that matter. But you should have seen me. I was complaining to my fellow players, showing my cards after every fold to players already out of the hand, and just generally driving myself crazy over what was, albeit a mathematical freak show, just 10 bad starting hands to start a tournament. That's all. But I literally had to get up and take a walk around the luxurious Borgata poker room after the 10th hand was dealt to me, that's how out of my mind I was just from seeing all those 2s in my pocket cards. Clearly, I was out of the right mindset and out of experience in playing mtt's, and it really showed.

Similarly, after months and months generally away from the game, my instincts were no more in no-limit form than one would expect them to be. After managing to calm myself down once the 2s stopped flowing almost exclusively to my hands, I proceeded to bet or raise a few times with total garbage either before or on the flop -- I had to try to play with something, didn't I? -- based largely on what I perceived to be weakness among the players in front of me, and I was generally wrong about as often as I was right. Almost every time I tried to open-steal in the earlygoing from middle or late position, some clown behind me who I had been sure was looking like he would fold, would instead reraise, and I would end up sheepishly folding. Around the three- or four-hour mark, I was getting to be around half the average stack (I was never really above average in this entire 13-hour run, it would turn out), and I made two different flop raises against guys I had read as tight and weak, and on both instances was forced to fold when my opponent surprised me by reraising me allin. Yes, I made the good fold in each case, but both folds -- in particular the second one -- were crippling to my already weakened stack. Although I obviously made a number of good reads as well to have lasted as long as I did, I simply could not count on my instincts to carry me very well in this tournament, something which I know stems from a total lack of experience playing the game over the past seven months time.

Lastly, I sucked out not once but twice with almost all of my chips in the middle just to last as far as I did. After the second big flop fold on my bluff that I mentioned above, I was down to around 4000 chips (starting stack had been 12,000) and a good 20-25% of the average stack. I was basically done. The action folded to me in middle position on the very first hand of the 5th hour, and I insta-pushed with A9s. I support this move of course, being as totally short and desperate as I was, and what I really wanted (within the realm of reason) was a hand like 66 or 88 to call me and give me a fighter's chance for a double-up. But unfortunately for me, the big blind woke up with AQs, instacalled my short ass of course, and I started to pack up my stuff when a 9 fell on the flop, which amazingly held and I was back at least to around half of average, and more than 15 big blinds which at least gave me some room to move. But I had gotten it in totally dominated, and had won a 1-in-4 chance just to be able to survive.

I made an even worse read later in the tournament, after picking up some more chips when I made my first two playable starting hands of the entire day, both during Hour 6, when I was dealt JJ and AK in two out of three hands. That was a long-ass time to wait for a freaking starting hand to play, and I had to suck out once allin preflop just to even be around to see these cards dealt to me, but at one point after accumulating some chips from those two hands, I started just plain beating on the guy two seats to my left, who was always the big blind to my button. He had shown himself to be totally and openly tight as hell, and so I had started raising his c-bets with abandon, and just generally constantly putting his entire stack at risk in situations where I simply did not think he had the fortitude to gamble it up without a very strong hand that I did not think he had. And it had been working. I had made him fold three separate times on three stone bluffs from me, and he was getting pizz-nizzed with me and made no bones about it with his facial expressions and mannerisms. This guy was just fixing to mix it up with me, and I knew it because I could read his emotions like a book. But, I let my lack of sharp poker instincts get the best of me by falling into the worst kind of trap with these tight players. I think it was Tommy Angelo's book where I saw this excellent tidbit about playing against tight players -- when you pound on these pussies enough and make them fold over and over again because they're too afraid to play a big pot without the nuts, these guys absolutely are fixing to play a pot against you. But they're tightass pussies, so they're not fixing to take a big bluff up against you. They're just waiting, holding on and praying for a hand like pocket Aces. That's the kind of hand these guys are praying to mix it up with you with. They're generally not the types to try to take you on with a big bluff, because that's not their game.

Well, about 7 hours in, I forgot all about that and made a dumb call against this tightass in my big blind, and I nearly lost my chance for a score as a result. At this point there were probably around 60 players left out of the 251 who started in the $350 buyin event plus the $100 bounties, and I open-raised from the button for the umpteenth time against his big blind, this time with me holding A9s. The tight big blind just called, so I knew he wasn't super strong (because no tightwad just calls with AA or KK in that spot, take it from me, they're too afraid of getting sucked out on and they're too angry and disbelieving that I have any hand after I try to steal from them for the 15th time over just a few hours time), but I figured he had to have something. The flop came down K94 rainbow, giving me middle pair top kicker, and knowing that the guy had to strongly suspect me of stealing from him again, I figured I was actually in pretty good shape here so I went ahead with a standard c-bet of around 2/3 the pot. Well, Mr. Tighty finally grew himself some balls and pushed allin, which for me represented about 90% of my remaining stack. I would still be alive if I called and lost, but only in theory as I would have had just a few big blinds left to play with. Effectively, this was an allin push against me, and as I sat there replaying the hand, his expressions and mannerisms, and just running through the history I had built up over a couple of hours of play abusing this guy over and over again, I think I let my instincts convince me of what I at first knew to be true -- this guy had top pair. I don't think his tight ass would have played TT, JJ or QQ with just a call of my stealy-looking raise preflop, and I did not think he was loose or aggressive enough to throw away a chance at even min-cashing (the top 27 finishers would get paid in this event) by moving in here with pocket 8s or lower given the two overcards on the board. So I stared at the K94 on the board, and I even noted that absolute lack of real draws available (thus giving more credence to his bet representing a made hand of some kind), but as I kept thinking things through, I could feel myself convincing myself that I should call. "This guy is furious at me", I told myself (which was undeniably true). He's just been waiting to push back at me and get some of his chips back for hours, I said inside my own head (also obviously true). And yet, even though at first I clearly saw him for having some kind of a middling King in his hand -- because, after all, a la Tommy Angelo, the tightwad player isn't waiting to bluff me with nothing, but rather to push 'em in when he honestly believes he has the best hand -- the more I stared at the board, the more my fuzzy and out-of-practice poker instincts chipped away at what was clearly the right inclination -- to fold. I distinctly remember asking myself "Come on, what are the chances that this guy happens to hold one of the other three Kings in the deck, in the big blind no less?" Ahhh, the favorite move of the guy convincing himself to make the wrong play. The answer to that question, of course, was that the odds of him holding a King were pretty damn high, given his action in the hand and what I knew about his play over the previous few hours. I also distinctly remember telling myself that, given my A9, I beat all hands but top pair, so if he was in there with a hand like J9 or 89 or A4s or something, I was well ahead and in great shape. All true mathematical points, mind you, but simply inappropriate attempts to get myself to make a big call with second pair top kicker against a super tight player who would not have been in there without a good hand himself. Now, you throw in a couple of draws on the board, and my second pair top kicker starts to look a little better, even against a tight player like him, but the rough texture of that board should have told me all I needed to know, and the right move was to fold there, for sho.

But instead, after agonizing for some time, I made the call, slowly flipping up my A9 semi-confidently after all the self-convincing I had done, but of course I was deep down not surprised to see the tight guy table KJs. It's the perfect hand for him to have called my stealy-looking preflop raise with, and to push allin with on the K94 flop. It was obvious even, in retrospect. I mean, I should have been able to predict his exact hand more or less down to either KT or KJ with that action and what I knew about this player. But again, my less-than-honed poker instincts took over and convinced me to make the play that I started off the flop knowing to be wrong. Basically, almost any time in my entire poker career when I have actively convinced myself to turn a fold into a call, I've been wrong, and it's something that I almost never used to do when I was playing poker regularly. But take half a year off from the game with any regularity, and here I was, screwing up and making the ultimate rookie mistake against a guy whose play was so awful that a child could have known my second pair was behind. I asked how much his stack was and cut out the chips, lamenting the tiny pile I would have left to toss in on the very next hand and clear out of dodge, and as a result I didn't even see the Ace fall on the river to give me the hand and a new lease on life in the tournament. I made "the face" to the guy I had just eliminated, taking his $100 bounty chip for my third bounty on the day in the process -- you know that face, the one that any guy who's played a million poker tournaments gives when he knows how pissed and disappointed the other guy is because he himself has been sucked out on and outplayed someone only to get beat by dumb luck more times than he can count. To his credit, my opponent gave me back the "it's ok, it happens" face -- a look I have still not even close to perfected, myself -- and from there I was able for the very first time all day to play with at least a little bit of chip utility in my stack.

All this is to say, I made a nice deep run in the tournament last week, but I got my usual dearth of playable starting cards, and my instincts were about as off as they ever get. I simply did not play great poker on this day, but I was lucky enough and played just well enough to survive and actually manage to win some decent cash despite my poor instincts at the tables. Despite all of this, however, one thing I did do in the tournament was make a number of solid laydowns -- despite the one stupid screwup against Mr. Tightie that I described above -- including one pretty big laydown in what turned out to be by far the biggest pot I saw all day. More on "the pot" in tomorrow's post. And yes, that will mean two poker posts in two days, so just deal with it.

More Thoughts on Foxwoods and My Live MTT Performances

Jordan left me an interesting comment to my post yesterday expressing my disappointment about my performance at Foxwoods this past weekend, or to be more specific, about my performance in large live mtt's in general. Here is the text of Jordan's comment from that post:

"Hoy, if you played 7 MTTs in a night and didn't cash in any of them, would it disturb you as much as playing 7 big tournaments over several years without a cash?

I only mention this because I, too, was unable to succeed at the Turning Stone tournament this weekend (for some reason, my site is down, so no post yet). It sucked, but I had to remind myself of the fact that it is one tournament and my sample size of large buy-in tournaments is relatively small. I thought I'd pass the thought on to you. Being 0 for 7 sucks, but its only out of 7, after all."

All fair enough. But here's the thing: I know I should be performing better in these tournaments. I'm there, and I see how the others play, and I know how I play, and it is very obvious that I should be doing better. But I'm getting ahead of myself here.

First, a few clarifications. For starters, I'm only referring to the largest, multi-day live mtt's I've played in, because in one-day live events I am perfectly happy with my performance and my profitability. And also, I'm not talking about cashing in these large live mtts -- rather, I'm just talking about making it to Day Two. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I think I have played in seven multi-day live mtt's in my poker career -- three WSOP tournaments, one WSOP circuit event at Caesar's in AC, one large-buyin tournament series event at Foxwoods last year, and the Venetian Deep Stack event where I recorded my biggest ever live score, plus this past weekend's near-bubblage. In about half of these events, making Day Two and cashing were pretty close to the same thing -- even in the Venetian DSE back in 2009, we made the money around midnight on Day One, played another two or three hours to get down to 48 players, and then reconvened the next day to determine the winners. But in the other half -- namely, the 3 WSOP tournaments as well as the WSOP Circuit tournament I played in -- those were three-day events, so making it to Day Two would not at all have even necessarily meant cashing in the tournament. So I could easily have several more Day Two's under my belt without having some obscene cashing percentage in the largest live mtt's I have played in. And yet I have just the one Day Two at the Venetian, and that pisses the shit out of me.

Looking directly at Jordan's comment, to answer his question, yeah, I think I would be a little bit surprised (though I'm sure it's happened before) if I played 7 online mtt's each at full attention in say a week and failed to get through maybe 60% of the field in any one of them. If I played seven live mtt's and could not even last far enough to the equivalent of Day Two in a WSOP tournament in any of them, hells to the yeah that would disturb me. Shouldn't it? Day Two in the preliminary WSOP events is what, roughly two-thirds of the field gone? That sure as hell would strike me as unacceptably poor performance for me, if I failed to outlast two-thirds of the field in all seven out of seven live mtt's I played in. It would. If that makes me pompous in someone's mind, I can live with that. I am a self-proclaimed "hammer-playin pompous ass" right here on the blog, so yeah, call me pompous if that's your read. But yeah, to answer the question asked, if I don't even last through two-thirds of the field in seven out of seven live mtt's -- in particular live, where I am playing just one mtt and there are zero other distractions to take my attention away from the game -- then yes, that seems more than bad enough to be worthy of my noticing, and my lamenting my poor performance.

And don't get me wrong -- I understand Jordan's point perfectly, and it is perfectly valid to a point. A sample size of seven is pretty much not even worth mentioning, statistically speaking, when it comes to drawing conclusions about the totality of my poker tournament prowess. Of course. Which is why I'm not using my lifetime 1-for-7 in making Day Two's at all to argue that it comprises a representative sample from which to draw conclusions regarding my poker tournament skill in general. Yesterday's was not a post of me saying "I guess I'm just not that good at poker tournaments after all!" or anything similar, which I agree totally with Jordan is not a conclusion one can draw from this relatively tiny sample size of seven live nlh tournaments spread over five full years of play. Much the opposite -- my point in barching about my results in the largest live mtt's I've played in is that I clearly am a good tournament player, and yet my results simply do not jibe with that conclusion. It is precisely because I know this 7-tournament sample of tournament results is not representative of my actual skills, that I am here writing these posts lamenting my lack of performance in those events.

I should be doing better in these tournaments. I don't just mean that in the abstract, either. I'm better than most of the people who enter these larger-buyin tournaments in casinos these days. Period. That wasn't true when I first started playing tournaments in casinos -- much the opposite, I've written here about how I could not imagine ever winning a casino tournament way back when I first started getting seriously into this game several years ago -- but in today's day and age, it's very clear that I am closer to the top of the skill levels of the players in the tournaments in which I play. Anyone can choose to believe or not believe this as they see fit, and of course I am more than fine with that, but the bottom line is, one of my favorite things about the whole experience of playing a large-field, solid-buyin live casino mtt, is going through the motions of quickly figuring out who is playing too tight to win, who is playing too loose to hold on to their stacks, who the calling stations are, who are going to be the chasefonkeys at the table, etc.

Let me say this a slightly different way. For the past three or four years or so, when I sit down to a live mtt of almost any reasonable size, things quickly shake out at the table in a way that is only known to a few of the players at the table. I'm sure this will sound familiar to a few of you out there as well. There are usually one or two other guys there that are more or less like me at a random table -- guys who play smart, tight-aggressive poker, guys who you quickly realize you don't really want to mix it up with in a pot in the earlygoing unless you have to. These are often the guys who are out there firing barrel after barrel and taking down a lot of pots uncontested, or they're the guys who always seem to be showing down big cards in the biggest pots, etc. It doesn't usually take more than an hour or so for it to be clear -- at least to those two or three of us at the table -- who the other Players are seated with us. And everyone else has already by that point made it very obvious, again at least to the two or three of us, what their specific weaknesses are. Within an hour or two of sitting down -- who am I kidding, I start doing this almost immediately once I figure out specifically how someone is bad at tournament poker -- the two or three Players have not only correctly applied labels like "chasefonkey", "calling station", etc. to each of the bad players at the table, but we actually start isolating against them. So when dickhead calling station open-raises from early position, and I find a hand like KQ or AJ that I would fold against many raisers for whom I have more respect, I won't just call with that hand against the calling station -- I'll raise. Because even if you told me he had AT vs. my KQ, I would want to be in there against him heads-up in a heartbeat. All the Players do this, it is as natural to us as the day is long. And I can see the other couple of Players at every table I am at early in these things doing the exact same thing. We generally try to avoid playing each other, but boy do we take our whacks at the poker fools around us. That's almost the sole focus of our games for the first several hours at any live mtt -- taking the money of the non-Players at the table.

Anyways, this isn't supposed to be a description of every little trick of the trade that I employ in poker tournaments. It is, however, a simple statement of fact that I am one of those guys -- at every single live poker tournament I ever enter nowadays, all the way up to the $2500 WSOP buyin events that I have played -- that is very aware of the badness of those at my tables, and who follows the same strategy of attacking those bad players just like every other good player there. We all do the same thing, and it's very overt in its own way if you know it is going on. And I'm one of those guys, noting carefully how these two players call every single raise preflop ("I can't wait to pick up a hand against either of those monkeys!"), these two guys limp in with every single hand ("They'll bleed those chips away or get caught holding second-best if I don't get their chips first."), and how the guy to my right as well as two to my left have only played two hands in two hours ("Either they'll pick up pocket Aces, or they'll blind themselves to death like Broomcorn's uncle.") When I am so clearly above most of my opponents at every live tournament table I play at these days in terms of skill, in terms of knowledge of the game, in terms of feel, and -- thanks to the wonders of online poker while that was allowed -- in terms of mtt experience as well, it is difficult for me to be satisfied with 1 Day Two out of seven tries.

All of this would be much easier if I could just chalk my poor large live tournament results to bad play. Or to not paying attention. Or to a lack of study or care about the game and how to get better. But that is simply not the case with me. Every time I sit down to a poker tournament table, I know very quickly what most of the other players' weaknesses are, and I immediately join with the other skilled player or two at the table in a concerted plan to exploit those specific weaknesses. I'm sure I have spent more time reading about and studying the game than 99% of people out there, and I never let a hand go by at the table without carefully noting any salient details and tucking them away for future use against the participants. I know just from sitting there that I'm better than the majority of the players I've been up against in the large live mtt's I've played in, and that contributes quite a bit to my feeling of total dissatisfaction with only making it to Day Two one time in seven tries. The way I have outplayed people and the bad beats I've taken in a number of these events are more a testament to this fact -- and to Jordan's correct point about the sample size being very small in relative terms.

Somehow, the world's most successful poker players don't seem to get eliminated on Day One nearly as much as I do, suckouts or not. And I wish I had a good handle on why that is.
He

Foxwoods Recap

Well, I'm back, and I didn't win the $41 grand first prize in Event #1 of the Foxwoods Mega Madness, although I might have played the best out of the 360 entrants in the tournament while I was around. In fact, I didn't even cash. Although I am very pleased with the way I played, this one definitely goes down as just another failed attempt in a long string of mostly failed attempts in large, multi-day mtt's. Maybe it's something about my style of play that causes me to take on too many risks or something, I don't know. All I do know is that this is probably what, six or even seven events now that run more than one day, and I have lasted to Day Two exactly one time in my life. It's pathetic, really.

Anyways, enough wallowing (for now). Suffice it to say I am not happy with the outcome on Saturday. But as I mentioned, I am pretty darn pleased with the way I played overall. First and foremost, I followed my fucking rules that I set out last Thursday and Friday here very well:

1. Play tight early. I managed not to lose 20% of my stack early on this time around, which was all goodness. In fact, I won the first pot I put chips into in the first round with just 5 players at my table, and I won the second as well. I do recall briefly dropping back below the massive 25k starting stacks (500 big blinds if you're keeping score) maybe an hour or so into the tournament around noontime, but even that sojourn below 25k was only a brief one, as for the first time in a little while I got off to a positive start instead of tossing chips in chasing haphazard, poorly thought-out risks.

2. Loosen up preflop late Although I didn't get to play too too late that I could really start stealing and restealing almost purely by feel as often happens when the blinds really escalate once you're into the money and really whittling things down, I am proud to say that I attempted two pure resteals with air in this tournament, both when I really needed them, and I was not the least bit cowed to pull the trigger. It was good getting back to some practice over the past couple of weeks, and I think this was one area where the practice directly and clearly benefited me. I maybe could have restolen even more, but too much restealing without the cards to back it up before the flop often leads to a violation of rule #3 from last week below.

3. Protect my chips from needless, thoughtless risks. Again I have to give myself credit here, as I mentioned I did not slough off a bunch of chips early chasing inside straight draws in three-way pots and the like, so I did a good job of preserving my big stack to make sure I still had plenty of chip utility as the blinds quickly doubled and then doubled again over the first two hours of play, cutting that starting stack from 500 big blinds (M of 333 if you're counting) to just 125 big blinds (M of 83) in four 30-minute levels. Ultimately, I was very patient through a run of very little to play with in terms of starting cards. I remember being dealt AKo in the first round of play, I raised it up with just four opponents and they all folded. Otherwise, I never saw pocket Aces, pocket Kings, pocket Queens or pocket Jacks all day, nor did I ever get dealt AQ or AT (I was dealt the sooted JackAce in hearts once, which I won preflop as I recall late in the afternoon / early evening). I got one other AK as well, this one also sooted, and I played that one for an allin reraise in the evening when I was short and needed to push my good hands just to survive. But I just didn't get dealt the good starting cards. So, as any good poker player does, I had to improvise. I played a bunch of connectors in this thing for cheap pots early, with these super-deep stacks I just could not resist, but I didn't let myself call a lot of raises with them. Just limp along behind a previous limper (there are always tons of limpers early in these big events), or open-raise maybe to disguise my hand and give my c-bet a better chance of taking the pot down, but I didn't just throw in four and five big blinds every time just to chase spec cards indiscriminately as I think I was doing over the past week or two. Since I don't tolerate well just sitting around and watching my stack and my M dwindle while I wait for premium starting cards, I figured I'm going to have to really open up my standards early to see cheap flops if I want to maintain a roughly 10-15% flops seen percentage, is as (at least) my usual in my successful poker tournaments. As a result, after several rounds of just folding everything I began open-raising or overlimping every sooted connector I saw above 43s, every sooted one-gapper above 42s, and even pretty much every sooted two-gapper above 63s, in addition to every pocket pair I received (there weren't many, which included me folding the best starting hand I saw all day in TT to a raise and reraise preflop from a tighty who would go on to show pocket Queens). Oh, and when the internet pro kid in the sunglasses and the hoodie two seats to my right reraised preflop and then c-bet, won and showed the hammer on the flop against a guy across the table, I congratulated him and eventually ended up raising, winning and showing two hammers myself as well. I mean, I had to play something like I had a hand I could take to a flop, and sometimes if the poker gods aren't going to give that hand to you, and you have some fold equity left, you just have to act like the poker gods gave it to you anyways. This got me involved in a lot of pots with weak cards hot and cold, but they were tricky and powerful cards at the same time. Once in a while I would hit em a little bit, or I would smell weakness from my opponent, and I was basically able to hold my own and stay a little above the starting stack for a good five or six hours just playing like that. I did not play any big, big pots, and I preserved what I had and didn't allow myself to get a big portion of my stack into a situation without a big hand to back it up. The biggest pots I won between the 11am starting time (25k starting stack) and the 6:50pm dinner break (66k chips) were:

I flopped two pairs with 96s on a K96 board three or four rounds in, against a guy who called a large check-raise by me on the turn when another raggy four fell, and then checked down with me when I got scared of the river Ace (he showed KQo).

Two or three hours in, a guy bet into me on the KQ7 flop, I called with KJ because this clown had bet at every single flop all night long, and then he proceeded to bet into me again on the turn, and again on the river where I was so sure he was feigning strength with the way he threw his chips into the middle -- again I had seen him do this once or twice before already on the day -- that I considered raising him, but didn't want to be the dickhead losing half his stack raising the river with top pair against a guy who'd bet into him on all three streets. He showed QT for middle pair, middle kicker. No way he could stop betting that one, even on the river, right? This pot literally added about 60% to my stack at the time, and was a much-needed boost over 35k for the first time as I kind of struggled all day to stay even with average even though I did manage to slowly grow my chip stack throughout the day.

In the late afternoon, I limped into a three-way pot from the button with T9o (this is the kind of hand I had to expand my range to as I continued not to receive the premium starting cards that everyone knows to play), and the flop came down J86 with two of a suit. The first player checked this flop that isn't going to help most preflop raisers unless they had a big pocket pair, and I checked as well in the hopes of seeing a free card with my open-ender, and then the huge stack across the table from me slid out a way-too-large bet, probably one-and-one-third times the size of the current pot. He was this old guy who'd been at my table for a good few hours at this point, and he had been caught totally bluffing with multiple barrels on at least three different occasions, but he bet so often and so aggressively that he had won a ton of pots doing that same thing as well, and he got paid bigtime on his few big hands because of that Gus Hansen-like style. But the only other time I had seen him bet so many chips relative the size of the pot over several rounds of play, he had done it with the exact same mannerism he had used this time -- really throwing the chips way out in front of him, almost like he was angry at them or something -- and that time, he had been called down and would not even show his cards, he auto-mucked them without even seeing what his opponent had. He had also recently lost a large-ish pot and I think might have been steaming a little as it was, but something about the way he shoved made me not believe him for a second. If anything, it seemed like an angry shove by someone who had missed the flop and had really expected to nail it. His bet was for around 8000 chips into a pot with I think 6900 in it, and at the time I had around 45k in chips in my own stack. I debated pushing allin right there, but frankly, I didn't want to throw em all in there in case he might actually be willing to make it obvious to me that he really is strong here with another raise or lead-out on the turn, and I thought in the end that an allin didn't look as strong or as scary anyways as just a raise. I kicked it up to 21k, carefully selected to leave myself enough still for a very credible bet on the turn if necessary, and I had made sure my stack was perfectly flush and visible to him so that he could figure that fact out on his own as he considered my raise. He hemmed and he hawed, but he eventually folded and I climbed up just over 60k shortly before the dinner break.

I headed to Fifth Street, the newly-redone cafe in the back of the poker room downstairs at Foxwoods, and got a nice down-home sausage and egg sandwich freshly made on a bagel for me at 7pm. That went down well and left a nice feeling in my stomach as I headed back in to try to make a run. We were down to 100 runners left out of the 360 who started at 11am on Saturday morning, and the average stack was 90k, leaving me at about two-thirds of average with 66k and change. Blinds would be starting at 2500-5000 after the break, giving me a little over 13 big blinds and basically precious little room to do anything other than push preflop other than maybe limp from the small blind. Fortunately for me, I quickly picked up pocket 9s in the cutoff, and when the guy to my right with a slightly shorter stack than me open-pushed when the action folded around to him, I called, hoping to win the race but overjoyed to see 66, and when my 9s held, I vaulted up to just over 100k in chips, the first time I had been above the average chip stack since the first few minutes of the tournament some nine hours-plus ago.

I was resolved to hold on to my above-average stack, that I had worked so hard and been so patient to get. This is so how many of my deep runs go -- I sit around, holding on through the early levels, not much to work with -- and then suddenly it all bursts and late in the pre-money stage, suddenly I pick up a hand or two and I go on a run. It's annoying as hell surviving long enough to get there, but when you finally do, you want to cherish it all the more because of all the work you had to do in winning all your pots with T8 and 96 and with reraise-bluffs, etc. Late in the second hour after dinner break, with blinds at 3k-6k and a 600 ante, and my stack still sitting comfortably just above average at around 115k in chips, I called a preflop reraise to 16k with my 98s in spades when I was in the small blind and there were already two others in to see the pot. The flop came down a beautiful T76 rainbow, giving me not only the flopped straight, but one with no flush draw on the flop, and it was even the top part of a flopped inside straight that is going to be extremely hard for anyone to pick up a higher straight than mine on. So I check the action from the cutoff, and the guy across the way with maybe 80k in chips leads out for a normal-sized bet of 22k into what had to be a 60k pot already. The next guy folds, so it's just me and the bettor heads-up. I do my best hollywood, looking up in the air as if I have something to think about, taking a good 45 seconds or more to ponder my next move as if I wasn't sitting on the stone cold nizzuts. I recall even taking the time to cut out the 22k from my stack and look at the rest of it, as if I wanted to see what might happen if I called but then had to fold the hand on the turn. Eventually, not wanting to spoil that hollywood and spook my opponent with a raise, I cut off enough chips for a call and slid them slowly out to the middle.

The turn came another 6, making the board now T766. Not the literal best card I could hope for by a long shot, but all things considered, certainly not a bad card to me. If anything, I can use it to my advantage, as I quickly pushed in the rest of my stack as if I maybe had a 6, all the while hoping that he was the one who maybe held a 6 in his hand and would give me another near-double up to jump me up near the top of the remaining 75 or so players' stacks. The guy absolutely amazes me by calling, and his face quickly turns very red as he flips up...QTo. Now, granted, this was a limped pot, but this guy is calling my allin bet on a T766 board for a lot of chips with QT. As I stood up, I said out loud, "I flopped the straight, but since he called I'm sure he's going to be drawing at me", but then when he flipped up just top pair, I literally had just said in amazement "Or, no, he's actually drawing dead" when the dealer peeled off another six on the river. Immediately I saw my mistake, that my opponent was actually drawing to four outs on the river -- the two other tens and the two other sixes -- and he had just nailed one of them on a miracle 91%-to-9% underdog shot with one card to come. The people at my table nearly fell over, first from sheer amazement when they saw what my opponent called me with, and then from grimacing an groaning as the river was turned and I started stacking my chips next to his to pay this guy off.

I mean, I'm aware that this is ultimately just the standard bad beat story that the Internets are much better off without since April 15 of this year, but come on! You bust ass all night to fight and claw and pick your way down to the final quintile or so of players left, you never see a premium starting hand, you wait all night long to finally flop your first big flop of the entire tournament, you dupe a guy into sheer embarrassment for his entire stack, waiting until after the turn to do so, and a guy hits for a better than ten-to-one longshot on the river to cripple you. I was beside myself. I felt like that fat kid at the WSOP last year, losing that huge pot to get eliminated short of the final table thanks to that huge spike on the river. I had to get up and take a walk for a couple of hands just to keep myself calm enough to finish out the tournament, but this was a blow that I would never recover from. It was around 9:45pm when I lost this huge hand -- closing in on 11 hours in to one of the longest days of poker of my life -- and I still had around 30k in chips left, although with the blinds set to increase momentarily to 4k-8k with an 800 chip ante, 30k in chips ain't much to play with.

Amazingly, I managed to last another hour and a half even with each round of poker costing 20k just to see ten flops (we had recently consolidated again to ten-person tables with 60 players remaining out of the 360 who had started -- slated to pay the top 35 finishers, btw). Here I folded mostly every hand I saw for 90 minutes, with the exception of one nice resteal from another shorty who wanted to stay alive to make the minimum cash of $1188, and two others. One was an allin push from me with A9s from middle position, which got called by the huge stack on the button with 77 and my Ace hit to prolong my agony a bit further, at that time bringing me back up to around 40k in chips. And the other was at around 11:15pm, when I was back down to around 32k in chips, and I look down to finally see AKo, just my second AK of the night (the first since the very first round twelve hours earlier), and believe me when I say it was just what I needed at that point in time. I pushed allin preflop once again from middle position, and once again the button with the ginormous stack gave me the once-over, before announcing out loud, "Eh...I've got the chips, I'll pay you off." He flips up KJo, a joyous sight for my big slick, that is until the Jack-high flop ended my night in a very annoying, and yet extremely a propos fashion.

So that's the story. I got very little to play with, but I made my own action for twelve hours on Saturday at Foxwoods, and in the end some shithead called my flopped straight down with top pair Queen kicker and hit a 9% shot on the river to take most of my chips. I survived another couple of hours as a mini stack, only to run AK into KJ preflop and not be able to fade a Jack on the flop. All that hard work, wasted. All that money so close to in my grasp, gone (first prize in this was 41k, with 9k going to the first elimination from the final table in 9th place). And, maybe it's a function of just having been away from the game for a while, but it is still bothering me greatly here some 36 hours post detonation.

Poker is a brutal game, and tournament poker all the moreso. In case anyone was wondering, I notice that the Department of Justice hasn't done shit to change that aspect of poker at all over the past few months. I'll tell you one thing though -- I am sure glad that was't a $2000 buyin that got monkeysucked by a window-licking momo without a brain in his head out close to the money at the WSOP. I literally would have put my hand through the computer screen entire fucking Amazon room.

Foxwoods Keys to Success

Just one more day of workin for the man and I will be off to Foxwoods for Event #1 of the Spring Into Summer Mega Madness tournament series. As I have mentioned here over the past week or two, this is a $600 buyin no-limit holdem tournament with a $125k guaranteed prize pool. Based on what I've seen and heard, I would guess this event will end up pulling in a good 300, 350 runners on a weekend (hopefully more, of course) and that 125k guarantee will be easily exceeded, but I guess I won't know until a couple hours after Saturday's 11am ET start time. It would be so great to finally make just the second Day Two of my poker playing career, but in order to do that, I'm going to have to play a heck of a lot better poker than I played in my two recent practice tournaments I detailed in yesterday's post. I wanted to take today's post to write down and cram into my brain once again the lessons I learned from playing this week that I had grown quite rusty about over my three-month poker hiatus.

First and foremost, I have to do better at not betting too aggressively and/or play too loose right off the bat in the hopes of hitting that miracle flop. This is simply not advice I have ever needed to focus on before -- I think playing 100 mtt's a month thanks to the wonder of online poker helps from making any one tournament seem too important or too boring to sit on the sidelines for -- but it is clear from my recent tournament experiences that it's where I am at now. I resolve on Saturday not to drop more than 10% below my starting stack during the first two rounds of play unless I pick up a big hand and am forced to make a major laydown. In general, making laydowns has never been and continued not to be my problem over the past week -- I laid TT and AQs preflop, I folded a slow-played TPTK to a big river raise from a guy who made too many deliberate faces at me while I was pondering my move on the river to have anything other than a big, strong hand, and I even laid down two pairs twice on the river to big action, one of which was still a multi-way pot. But unless something like happens, I flop a set and then the river four-flushes or something and I face a huge bet, I will not play too aggro early on, I will not call preflop raises or reraises with garbage, and I will absolutely not allow my desire to mix it up with the clear fish at the table to back me into a corner where I am in against a strong player with a weak hand late into a pot.

Secondly, assuming I last through the first, say, three or four hours of this tournament, I resolve to resteal more. Shit, I resolve to resteal at all, given my timidness in several a propos situations over the past 9 or 10 hours of tournament play I put in this week. I have simply got to take advantage of stealing from the stealers, because each time you do it, it is worth a good couple of orbits of sitting out and just ceaselessly contributing your blinds and antes. And the big problem is, everyone steals nowadays. The blind steal has become such a part of the nlh tournament game nowadays -- in particular among the young types that will likely predominate the scene at Foxwoods this weekend -- that if you do not take advantage of the stealers from time to time, not only do your own blinds get eaten up when you are in the first two seats left of the dealer, but your ability to steal any pots diminishes over time since someone else is always in there ahead of you opening the action. I have to tell myself over and over again: there is no way these guys are that strong, all the time. This was always something that I used to take for granted as it came naturally to me to play with this type of attitude over the years, but as I mentioned yesterday, if there's one thing I take away from my tournament play this week, my lack of balls when it comes to restealing from the preflop stealers is That Thing. Of course, restealing with total air will eventually run me into a monster and end my tournament run prematurely, but all I can say is, I've honestly never had a deep, deep tournament run where I never restole from someone who I thought was trying to pick up the blinds and antes with a weakish hand preflop. Never. Some of that of course is the cards I get, some of it is situational of course, but the bottom line is, if someone is on a medium stack and we're getting down near the money, a well-time allin against a guy giving off a weak vibe pays dividends, not only directly in terms of the amount of chips in my stack, but also in the meta game, as you keep everyone thinking every time they consider putting in a raise before the flop with less than a premium holding.

My game has always relied as a major cornerstone on preflop aggression. Even when I can feel the bubble near, as I could twice over the past week, I need to keep up the pressure against the people I believe can fold and who have demonstrated a willingness to mix it up with beatable hands.

The last thing I want to make sure I remember -- and this, too, is something that needn't even be said back when I was playing with regular consistency -- is to preserve my chips. In that first tournament this week, I know why I pushed allin on the flop on a stone bluff with 9-high in the hand where I got eliminated. I know what went into the decision, and taking everything into account, I still think there was a good chance when I made that move that I was right in that spot and could have chipped up nicely in that hand. But did I need to make that move just then? I was 5th in chips with less than two full tables remaining, and the top 8 slated to receive payouts. Was there a good reason for me to risk my entire stack on a guess -- and that's all it was, an educated guess -- that the biggest stack left in the tournament was weak, when I couldn't even beat a bluff and had barely any outs to draw to even if I got called? No, of course, there was not. So I probably shouldn't have been doing it. Or at the least, I should have thought about my play in the exact terms that I just described it before making the decision to push everything allin and risk elimination just short of the money by one of the few stacks left in the tournament that could wipe me out in one hand. And I can tell you, I did not think about it at all like that at the time. At the time it was just like "Well, there's no way that clown has a hand again. If he leads out on the flop, I'm pushing no matter what." I didn't look at his stack, my stack, the other stacks at the table, and I did not consider that I had literally just managed to climb my stack out of the doldrums for several hours back up well above average as we were fixing for a run to the final table. To go and throw away all of that patience, all of that hard work, all of that deserving success, running a stone bluff with 9-high against a guy with a monster stack who'd been hitting hands all day and who raised me preflop and led out on the flop? Not smart.

Play tight early. Loosen up preflop late, especially against the middle stacks who already have an inclination towards folding. And protect my chips from needless, thoughtless risks. These are the keys to my having a successful tournament at Foxwoods on Saturday. I will try to update here how I am doing, in particular if I last a little while and might be making a run. Have a great weekend everybody and wish me luck at the indian reservation in Connecticut.

Two Live Tournaments

I am such a dork. I mean, here I am, a couple of days away from heading out to Foxwoods for my first live casino poker tournament in several months, and I find myself spending time preparing myself mentally for the game, walking through the steps, basically all the stuff I would probably be doing if I were sitting in Las Vegas right now about to head down to the Amazon room at the Rio. Which is one thing if you're about to sit down to the World Series of Poker in world-famous Las Vegas, but it's a whole other thing to be making any kind of a big deal about a regular tournament series event at a big casino on the other side of the country from Sin City. But it's a $600 buyin event -- this will make it I believe the highest-buyin poker tournament I have ever played in any live play, other than the three WSOPs in which I have partaken over the past four years -- and with a $125k guaranteed prize pool, there is a lot to play for, even if it isn't a gold bracelet.

So, in advance of Foxwoods on Saturday, I attended a live poker tournament this week (two, actually) run by a friend of mine in New York City, each tournament sporting around 60-70 entrants, in the hopes of reconnecting with those nlh tournament skills I had honed so finely over five or six years of near-daily practice, or at the least of figuring out just how off my game is likely to be after three months of absolute cold turkey with online poker. In each tournament, I managed to run pretty deep, but in both of them I ended up never really amassing the big stack I needed to really make a run at the final table. And, more than that, I think I can tell you pretty easily just why that is.

In the first tournament I played, I went down right off the bat and was not really able to recover. Six levels in, I had been bumping along at less than half the tournament average for the past couple of hours, and suddenly I found pocket Kings -- in the big blind no less -- and long story short, two guys got allin against me and I more than tripled up. This gave me new life, and within the next hour or so, I took A♣K♣ for a reraise preflop against a short-stacked player who made a blatant mistake in calling my preflop reraise when it was for half of his remaining stack. The flop came all rags, but with two clubs -- giving me a good 15 outs if not the lead already, and seeing that my opponent had around 50% of his chips in the pot already, I knew I wanted to get the rest. I had the feeling he had called with a spec hand -- not a big pocket pair, helped of course by the fact that I held one Ace and one King in my own hand -- and a nagging part of me thought he might fold and try to push a different hand preflop if I really put him to the test here. So instead, I stared for a couple of seconds at the raggy flop and put on my best "I missed" face, followed by a very slow and weak-looking check with my right hand barely touching the table. My opponent instantly took the bait, insta-pushing allin for the rest of his stack, which I obviously called, and the look on this guy's face when he saw my cards was just priceless, as he flipped up J9s in the wrong suit, for a big fat nothing. A total bagel. A couple of "nice check"s from the other players around the table to me, and I had doubled up again, sitting on a pile about twice the tournament average, as we got down to the final 2 tables with me in 5th place out of 18 or 19 runners remaining.

Unfortunately, my stint at the final two tables would be fairly short-lived, as the chipleader was this uberdonkey to my right who had made so many bad plays with bad cards over the preceding couple of hours at my table that nobody observant could possibly ever put him on a hand early in a pot. Well, he open-raises with his ginormous stack from the button -- my read of which is that he literally has any two cards -- and I look down in the small blind to find 9♠7♠, one of my favorite hands to play. I thought about reraising, but did not want to take my 5th-place stack against the 1st place stack with just two tables remaining, so I just called. When the flop came down a thoroughly un-scary J53 rainbow, the chip leader did what he had done about 50,000 other times since amassing his big stack, leading out for nearly the full size of the pot with a c-bet. I figured I didn't have him on a hand to begin with, and I certainly wasn't putting him on a hand that nailed a J53 rainbow flop, so I looked at his 12k bet into the 14k pot, and I looked at the roughly 45 or 50k in chips I had remaining in my stack (as compared to about 300k for him), and I pushed all-in, confident that he would not call with two garbage cards. He thought briefly, and then announced "I call" before flipping up pocket Kings. I looked and felt like the real donkey as I was essentially drawing dead right from the getgo, and I pushed him my chips and got out of dodge. Thus ended practice tourmament #1.

Practice tournament #2 took place a day later, and this time I once again went down early with a combination of c-bets gone wrong and a couple of loose calls preflop given that we started with 200 big blinds in our 10k starting stacks. From there, just as in the first tournament a couple of days earlier, I struggled along, playing tighter than I would like to help preserve my stack, and hoping to find a great spot or a big pair to chip up in a hurry. Eventually, after again getting down below half the average chipstack, I did manage to double up, once again when I picked up pocket Kings and got called allin preflop by a monster stack a couple of seats to my right who got in there with A9s. Finally with some chip utility working in my favor to enable me to play some poker, I was able to slowly chip up over the next couple of hours, once again making it down to the final two tables with me just under average but in fine position to make a run. I was unable to get over average, however, because I simply wasn't getting any playable cards and the rest of the table was being very aggressive, and whenever a resteal situation presented itself, something just didn't feel right about it to me so I opted to wait for a better spot that never really came.

Eventually, down to 16 players remaining and with me dwindling once again to about 2/3 of the average stack with around 40k in chips, I forced myself to open-raise preflop from middle position to 7000 chips with K7s in diamonds, and got one caller in late position from across the table, which told me pretty much nothing specific about his hand other than that he wanted to play with me and had the chips to see something cheap and see what happens. The flop came down K84, with the 8 and the 4 of diamonds, giving me top pair plus a King-high flush draw. I led out into the roughly 15k pot for 11k, wanting this to look like a regular c-bet where I would leave myself room to fold if I were in fact bluffing, and after just a few seconds, my fairly aggressive opponent announced that he was allin. I thought it over for a couple of seconds, figured this guy was probably on a higher King since I didn't think he'd played his hand like pocket Aces but I didn't really think he would be trying to bluff me either with how little I had been playing at the table. Still, as I computed the pot odds, I saw that there was about 50k effective in the pot, and I needed to call my last 22k or so to get there. Not even being sure this guy had top pair in the first placem, and with 9 redraw outs to a flush even if he did, there was basically no way I could fold this hand in this spot, even though it didn't exactly feel great as I made the crying call. My opponent flipped up pocket 4s for the flopped set, I did not improve to my flush, and IGH in 16th place.

So, it was two tournaments, two nice runs, but two finishes just short of the money. And what can I make of all this? What conclusions can I draw about the effect of a three-month layoff on my nlh tournament play?

Well, for starters, I played too aggressively early in both tournaments, causing me to lose precious chips early on on both days and seriously hampering my ability to chip up early, or even play good, wide-open poker early due to the loss of chip utility from my short stack. One of the killers on this point was that I knew I had dropped too early too fast in the first tournament, I had specifically noted this to myself as I reviewed the play in my mind, and I told myself -- ordered myself, really -- not to do that again in the second tournament, and then I went right out and did it again. It's not that I was playing totally recklessly, but even though I know this is totally wrong, for super cheap I called that preflop reraise with my sooted King-rag because I knew three other players had already entered the pot for that reraise. I called a preflop raise into a multiway pot with T9o. I even c-bet at a pot with four players after a late-position open-raise that I'm sure screamed to everyone that I was weak. Both days I did this stuff, and both days saw my 10k starting stack shrunk down to 6k or so within the first hour of play. That is no way to succeed in any poker tournament, and I know this. But on Saturday at Foxwoods, I will need to get myself psyched into the right frame of mind to protect my chips early if I expect to last to Day Two out at the Mashantucket Pequot indian reservation. And I don't just mean to say that I'll protect my chips like I did before my second practice tournament this week -- I mean to actually protect the goddam chips.

Another thing I have to say -- and this is not the least bit of a surprise -- but my reads were not as accurate as they usually are. Not by a longshot. Essentially, in both tournaments I busted by betting out into a better hand, so I missed those reads entirely. In the first tournament, I decided before the flop that the big stack must have no hand just because I knew he was a blind-stealing donkey. Of the highest order. As if uberdonkeys don't get dealt pocket Kings just as often as the rest of us, even in the blinds. Then when he led out on the flop, to be honest with myself I never even considered that he might actually have a hand. I knew I had nothing but two rags in the hole, so I knew I had to bet big to have a chance at winning the hand, and I basically fell into the beginning poker player's trap of not being willing to reconsider my read after locking on to something before seeing any of the cards or the action on the flop. That was just a horrible play, and not an hour after duping some other unsuspecting sap into bluffing off his entire stack into me, I was the shithead with the dumb grin on his face, picking up his stuff and leaving the room as I had just done exactly the same thing.

My elimination story in the second tournament is a little different. Now, if I had correctly read my opponent for extreme strength on the flop, no way I would have called allin there with just the top pair and flush draw combination. With a higher King and the flush draw, you could maybe see doing that. But at the time I figured I was behind and felt from the math that I simply had to call anyways. And any one of the hundred or so poker books I've read can tell you (and has told me) that you should always think through your bets to make sure you know before you bet what you're going to go if you get raised. I think it was Sklansky's no-limit book that explained it best, that basically if you bet or raise and get raised or reraised, and you are at a loss about what to do, then you probably made a bad bet or raise to begin with. In other words, if I had led out smaller on the flop, then I might have had an easier fold when my opponent raised me big with his flopset. Or if I had pushed allin, then once again I would not have left myself with the agonizing decision that I forced myself to make as to whether or not to call my opponent's allin. Those of you who have played live poker tournaments know how frustrating and how bad-ending it is to have to call off your remaining chips when you know you're behind. Even if the pot odds dictate your calling, as was the case in my second tournament elimination this week, to have to call off your stack in a tournament and need to catch something less than 50% likely is never, ever a good thing. Could I have avoided this if I had played the hand better, or if I was more in tune with the game than I am at this point? Maybe. Probably, even.

The last thing I should mention is that -- and this is a real shock for me to say of all people -- but I was an absolute pussy when it came to restealing from people. I mean, I basically invented the resteal. I've written numerous posts about it, and I have wielded the resteal from loose, mid- and big-stacked preflop stealers as a weapon about as often and as effectively as anyone out there. I've restolen and shown you all the hammer more times than anyone can count out there. And yet, here I was, sitting at a poker table and repeatedly not pulling the trigger even when I felt strongly that a raising opponent was weak and just trying to steal the blinds. I can't tell you how many excuses I made to myself in both practice tournaments for why now wasn't the right time: "My opponent looked too obviously weak on his face when he raised", "I don't have enough chips to resteal",, "My cards aren't good enough" (as if that ever stopped me before), and my favorite that kept occurring to me over and over again this week when I knew I should be restealing but didn't: "What if I lose? I'll be crippled. My whole tournament run is over."

I still can't believe that was me thinking all those things, but it was. Three months away from the poker tournament fray, and I have straight-up lost my edge for restealing. And I got news for you -- I dare anyone who's ever run truly deep in a live nlh tournament to tell me you didn't resteal quite a bit from the aggrodonks. You have to. You just can't avoid it. The blinds increase so fast at the upper levels, and the aggressive players are increasingly likely to be the only ones left as an nlh tournament wears down near the money, that there is just no way to survive and thrive without a few well-timed resteals. All I know is, I played deep into two different nlh tournaments this week -- probably a good 9 or 10 hours of play overall -- and I did not even attempt a resteal. Not once.

Pathetic, isn't it? I know. Well, that's what I'm up against as I prepare to head to Foxwoods for Event #1 of the Spring Into Summer Mega Madness series. Three months of no poker whatsoever, and the result is a guy who almost jumps out of his pants playing too many hands too strongly up front, who can't rely on his reads, and who ultimately is too chicken to pull of a resteal move that he knows he'll need to survive and that he used to be the undisputed king of. In a sad way, my performance this week kind of validates my skipping the trip out to Vegas this summer, because to be perfectly honest with myself, I played just about as bad as I expected to play. I still had my moments, and I don't think I'll ever lose the ability to determine just the action that will dupe an opponent into thinking I'm weak and pushing allin on me right when I want him to, but in the end, I played more or less just like I thought. Worse, even.

Here's hoping I get the chance to pull some re-steals at Foxwoods on Saturday afternoon. Otherwise, little return to live poker tournaments this week is likely to come to an early and arbupt ending somewhere in southeastern Connecticut.

Gettin' My Live Poker On

Yes, that's right...I'm actually going to be playing some poker this weekend!

No, it won't be in Las Vegas. As most of you have probably surmised following my earlier post and then lack of mention of a trip to the desert this summer, I have decided not to head out to Las Vegas. It's a decision that pains me greatly on the one hand, but then on the other hand it's also one about which I have zero doubt about being the right answer, even less so today than a couple of weeks ago. Without rehashing all the reasons here, suffice it to say that playing nlh poker tournaments -- especially ones for a reasonably high buyin and against people who generally have at least some modicum of experience playing as well -- is just such a game of "feel" for me, and there are just so many nuances, in particular in late-stage play, of when to push, when to go for the stop-and-go, when you can raise the limpers and blast everyone out of a big pot or when you need to just lay 'em down and wait for a better spot. And I just know I am nowhere near my best on any of those areas anymore. Period. End of discussion. While I think most truly good tournament poker players could probably still walk into a room like the Amazon room and perform at a level better than 50-75% of the participants in that day's tournament, 25th to 50th percentile is just not sufficient for me, in particular in a game like no-limit holdem where any one mistake can, and -- again, in particular in late-stage tournament play -- probably will be the undoing of your entire tournament. The odds of me being able to play well enough over a few days at the WSOP this year after not sniffing a single hand of poker in any form with anyone older than seven years old for a good three full months preceding the tournament, is just naive and silly. So, after much consternation and a good deal of effort trying to drum up a way that I think makes sense for me to play in the Series this year, it's going to be no Las Vegas for me this summer.

All that said, that does not mean that I won't be able to play any poker tournaments this summer. Quite the contrary -- Hammer Wife is down with me taking the time I would have spent in Las Vegas this summer and instead trying my hand at a couple of smaller tournaments -- yet hopefully still big enough to be worth my while and get my juices flowing a little bit. This week is not likely to work for me to make it down for the Borgata Summer Poker Open which is still going for another few days this week down in Atlantic City, but then, enter Foxwoods and their "Spring Into Summer Mega Madness" series running from June 25 through July 4. Even though I recently moved a lot further away from Foxwoods than I lived for the past couple of years, I am willing to make the trek out to the middle of nowheresville to play in Event #1 of the summer Mega Madness series at Foxwoods, which is this Saturday, June 25 at 11am ET. It is a $600 buyin no-limit holdem tournament, with "mega stacks" whatever exactly that means, and the other thing I love about this event is that it carries a $125k guaranteed prize pool. This makes Event #1 the largest event of the entire tournament series at Foxwoods other than the Main Event, which for only 25k more guaranteed in the prize pool, costs twice as much at $1200 to enter, so I like Event #1 a heck of a lot more than that.

So that'll be me, heading down to Foxwoods very early on Saturday morning for Event #1 of the Spring Into Summer Mega Madness tournament series. If anyone is in the area and wants to check me out, let me know and I can get you my cell phone number. Otherwise, it should be interesting to see how exactly the layoff affects me -- I know for certain that my play will be off and worse than my best, but I am specifically curious as to exactly how my lack of recent play affects my game. Will I play too tight or too lose with starting hands to compensate? Will I fail to c-bet the flop as much as usual? Or will I flame out a nice stack with an ill-timed bluff against a guy I should have read for more strength than I do based on the complete lack of recent practice to draw upon? Only time will tell.

Another Live Tournament Recap

I had the opportunity to play in a Labor Day nlh tournament at a local establishment, and it was one of those funny tournaments where some people just seem like they can do no wrong, no matter how hard they try to play bad poker. There were three tables in play, and one of the last guys to show up at my table -- sitting two seats to my right -- had the look of a guy who plays a fair amount of live poker, so I immediately pegged him as someone who was likely above average compared to the rest of the people at my table. As is often the case with non-casino events (or, frankly, even any random casino tournament with a buyin of less than $300 or so), the people around my table were really, really bad, like, painfully bad. They tipped the strength of their hand regularly, they grabbed for chips about 5 people ahead of when the action was coming to them to raise or call, and most of all, they seemed willing to limp with just about any two cards preflop. Those of you who know how I play will note how totally different that is compared to the way I approach the game, as you will not see me limping preflop often at all, and there are really only a few hands in the deck that I would ever limp with before the flop in most cases.

Suffice it to say, I was salivating at the thought of running over this table, save for Mr. Experience I mentioned above who seemed like a guy who has played the game a bit before. He had the earphones, the chip tricks, and just generally gave off the vibe of an experienced player, where most of the other clowns at my table gave off the exact opposite impression. We started with stacks of 10,000 chips and blinds of 25-50. Blind rounds were 20 minutes -- about average for most random live tournaments I find around the area -- and the structure was aggressive with doubles of the blinds every round for an hour and then an ante kicking in as well starting in the second hour, so this was definitely not a tournament created for the tighties to wait around for the pocket Aces they so desperately love.

Given the mix at my starting table in this thing, I immediately went to work trying to create an aggressive image, and I lost a few chips c-betting against two players in pots where they could not have made it more obvious that they were strong after I c-bet, so I managed to get away with the minimum lost after that point in both of those hands. Otherwise I didn't see any good cards for the first hour or so, and as bad as that was to deal with, I had to sit and watch Mr. Experience quickly demonstrate that he did not know nearly as much about tournament poker as I had originally thought, and yet just get paid off again and again and again.

Within the first five minutes of the tournament kicking off, Mr. Experience doubled up against a guy at the other end of the table when Mr. Experience instacalled all in on the Ten-high flop while holding JT, besting the mighty T6 of his opponent who exited early as he turned out to be the ultimate any-top-pair guy at the table. The instacall with just top pair Jack kicker for what amounted to about 180 big blinds was my first clue that Mr. Experience was probably not quite the seasoned poker pro I had read him to be. My second clue was maybe ten minutes later when he insta-pushed allin for well over 150 big blinds with T7 on a QT3 rainbow board. Of course, this time he got called as well by a player holding Q9s (I mean, how could he ever fold that for 100 effective big blinds?), and then, of course, Mr. Experience spiked a 7 on the river to eliminate his second player and swell his stack to over 30k in chips through just one level of blinds in this tournament.

Fast forward another 15 minutes to the end of Round 2, and Mr. Experience again found himself pushing allin -- this time for about 200 big blinds -- with 96 on a Q97 flop, got instacalled and found himself to be up against Q7 for flopped two pairs, and then proceeded to cut out the 10k in chips from his stack to pay off his opponent as he watched the turn and river come 6-6 to give him the miracle runner-runner boat, and to lift him to over 40k in chips when second place in the tournament at the time was sitting at around 15k -- and that 2nd place guy was me. I had been down to around 8000 chips before open-raising preflop with QJs, seeing an all-suited flop (wrong suit) of J93, and then leading out with a standard c-betty looking bet and getting called by one opponent who had been actively calling a lot of streets in a lot of pots without raising much at all, so I figured my top pair was likely to still be ahead here. On the raggy turn card which still left me with top pair, my opponent checked the action to me again but it was clear to me from his mannerisms that this was not some guy sitting on a flopped set and trying to string me along. He clearly did not want me to bet, so I did bet out again, confident that my top pair Queen kicker was ahead, and he called again after a few moments of hesitation. At this point, blinds had just increased to 100-200, and as I mentioned I was down to around 8k before the hand even started, so I had at this point more than a third of my stack in the pot, and when the river brought an ugly-ass Ace, I was about ready to spit. I just knew this guy had been calling me down with AQ or AT or something and had spiked his card on the river to beat my one-pair. But then a strange thing happened -- my opponent, who had check-called all the way through the hand to this point, waited literally no time at all before picking up his entire stack of chips and slamming it down really hard in the middle and announcing all-in in a faux-confident manner. The whole act was so ridiculous and so over the top to me that I instantly defined it as an act. I figured he did not have an Ace after all, and since I never thought he had a Jack either, all I could put him on was a bluff or some kind of middle pair or other. I hated calling off my last 20 big blinds or so with just second pair Queen kicker with an Ace on the board, but my gut kept telling me I was ahead all along and that I didn't trust his lead bet now either, so in the end after a good 20, 30 seconds to consider, I figured what's $100 if I'm wrong, but I thought I was ahead so I called. My opponent immediately slammed his cards down in disgust when I showed my Jack, flipped up a 9 for third pair. This brought me up to around 15k in chips, where again I was in second place in the entire tournament, behind only Mr. Experience two seats to my right who continually got in behind and made indefensibly silly bets in this and yet was sitting on around 42k in chips not even 45 minutes in to the tournament.

While I tried to get more aggressive with the 50% gain I had managed to the starting stacks in the first two blind rounds, Mr. Experience only got more and more brazen as his stack continued to swell. He raised three or four times in succession after a bunch of people had limped in behind him, at least one time showing down a face card and garbage eventually when he folded to a big raise on the turn, and at one point he reraised a preflop raiser for his entire stack with what turned out to be 97s, got called by pocket Jacks, and then proceeded to flop a flush draw and turn his flush to suckout-eliminate yet another player and jump to around 55k in chips, with me still in second place in the tournament with just under 15k. It was unreal what this guy was doing, the whole table was openly cracking up about it, and I could not wait to pick up a hand and take some serious chippage from this guy who clearly had no clue whatsoever how or when to slow down in a poker tournament.

Late in Round 3 as the first hour neared a close, I got my chance as Mr. Experience was utg and open-raised as he did every single time he was under the gun on the entire night to that point, and I peeled up the corners of my hole cards to find pocket Kings. Being that I was in middle position and that Mr. Experience was likely quite weak given his history to date, and given how positive I was that he would bet big (maybe even 300 big blinds!) on the flop regardless of whether it hit him or not, I opted to just call his preflop raise from middle position, hoping someone would try a squeeze where I could then re-reraise allin, but unfortunately nobody else wanted to mess with the two big stacks in the tournament to that time, especially when one of them had a golden horse up his ass. The flop came down Ten-high, and no sooner had I begun to consider how to get as close to a double-up as possible, when Mr. Experience immediately announced "I'm all in" once again. It was ridiculous, really. Here I am, trying to play this game correctly, and no wanting to end up with 80 big blinds in on the flop with just one pair, but the board was just so raggy and matched up so poorly with an utg preflop raiser's hand, and the guy had shown down so much utter stinking garbage so far on the night, that I felt compelled not to fold, and I simply announced "I have to call you with this hand."
I flipped up my pocket Kings for the overpair, and Mr. Experience showed pocket 9s -- easily the best hand he had shown on the day and thus I suppose better than what I expected, but he was no competition for me as my Kings were roughly a 91% favorite to take the hand over his underpair.

Then the 9 on the river continued this clown's ridiculous spate of luck, and ended my night early. All I know is, when I left this thing, there were I think 24 players remaining, with the five eliminations all having come at the hands of Mr. Experience, and he had around 72k in chips while second place was sitting on around 13k. Think about that for a moment -- and I don't think I honestly saw him make a single play on the day that was not a complete embarrassment to him and an abject affront to the game of poker across the board -- but he literally held more than five times the stack of the guy in second place -- not the average stack, but the second place stack -- not even an hour in to a tournament that was probably designed to last about 3-4 hours overall.

Now I can't say I stuck around to see how this tournament ended up, and the one guy I knew there who had mentioned it to me in the first place busted shortly after and he too does not know how it ended, but how much you wanna bet this guy found a way not to win the roughly $750 first prize in the end? All I know is, for me that is two consecutive live tournaments where my night ended an hour or so in on a river two-outer after being way ahead and even having the patience to wait until the flop was out before committing myself or my opponent. Could pokerstars be moving in to the live poker business?