*GASP* An Actual Update Today
Well . . .
Clearly, it’s been a while since I’ve posted. I haven’t really had the time to do the writing, and I haven’t played as much as I normally do. I’m writing this on the bus, on the way home from work as an experiment. If I can get a seat and a little space, it might work out that I can actually blog on a semi-regular basis. It’s not perfect-I hate a laptop keyboard, time is very limited, and I don’t have access to other livejournals and other important information-but at least I have thirty minutes or so to type.
Anyway, I wanted to post because two (fairly) major events transpired last night. Actually, there has been a lot of good news lately (with the new job and all), but two good things happened last night in regards to poker.
There is a certain tournament I have been playing in regularly lately. I am actually loath to give up the information (it’s a very soft game), but here it is anyway. It’s the 9:30pm $50+5 pot limit tournament at Pacific (if you sign up for Pacific, please use me as a referrer-my name is chgophil). I have played in it four times to date, and have made the (four-player) final table three times. The fourth time I finished just out of the money in eighth after taking THREE rough beats in a row to knock me out. The tournament usually gets 40-80 players.
Like I said, the game is soft. Even though it’s short-handed, it’s a limp-fest from start to finish. I would estimate that I saw the flop in the big blind without putting an additional dime in the pot about 85-90% of the time. When your opponents let you see the flop for free this often, all you have to do is sit back and wait for it to hit you hard. In addition, most (not all, but I really mean MOST) of the players who play in this tournament don’t understand pot-limit at all. There are SO many times that I had a marginal hand where I was “allowed” to see the turn and river with huge pot odds (not to mention implied odds). There is nothing better than a game where you are playing proper pot-limit and everyone else it playing like it’s a limit game.
Anyway, like I said, I only have the bus ride home to write so I can’t be too verbose. I got nailed on a rough beat early to put me down to about T200 (you start with T1000). So I went into super-aggressive mode and started putting in pot-sized bets every other hand. I slowly (and I mean slowly) built back up to T1000 or so, and then went on a run of doubling through, and doubling through, and doubling through again. With six players left (which only took about 45 minutes), I was the HUGE chips leader with around T17K. Since there are so many bad players getting knocked out early, it takes quite a while to knock anyone out late, when the blinds are still pretty small and the stack sizes are big by comparison.
Anyway, we had two tables of three left. One player at my table was decent (by this tournament’s standards), and one was almost 100% predictable, and super-super awful. The two of them were getting into it all the way to the showdown every hand, so I pretty much just let them fight it out while I played only premium hands. The top five places got paid, so the ratio of stacks to blinds, plus the fact that people were essentially playing a limit game made for a long, long bubble. Eventually the terrible player knocked the not-so-terrible player out on a series of monster vs. smaller monster hands, leaving me in the money, and heads up with a really bad player.
It went well for a while. I had seen him play many, many hands, and had his betting pattern pretty much worked out. I bluffed and took the pot when I knew he had nothing, and I got the hell out of his way when he got aggressive. Drawing hands were especially profitable, since he hardly ever bet more than the minimum. Just before we got to the final table, he caught on a flush draw and took about half my stack, making him the chip leader and me the second biggest stack. In the first few hands of the final table, he took half of it again, again calling my pot-sized bet and hitting his draw on the turn (he still didn’t bet big enough to take my whole stack).
Anyway, I was down to about T5K, in third place out of four, when I took out the small stack and doubled up against the 2nd place player in the same hand with JJ (hit my set on the flop with an ace showing, bet all-in and was called in two places). Shortly after that, the bad player took out the third player, and we were heads up. I can not think of another player in that tournament (or the world for that matter) who I would rather be heads up against.
He had 3x as many chips as I did when we started, but when the dust settled I had all the chips, and took home my very first multi-table tournament win!!! It was only a 40-player tournament, but I’m still very pleased.
I am basically out of time, but I will go ahead and just mention the other major event from last night: according to my spreadsheet, the $700 I won in the tournament put me over the $10K mark for the year! Not bad for a fun little hobby.
Don’t tell the IRS.
Clearly, it’s been a while since I’ve posted. I haven’t really had the time to do the writing, and I haven’t played as much as I normally do. I’m writing this on the bus, on the way home from work as an experiment. If I can get a seat and a little space, it might work out that I can actually blog on a semi-regular basis. It’s not perfect-I hate a laptop keyboard, time is very limited, and I don’t have access to other livejournals and other important information-but at least I have thirty minutes or so to type.
Anyway, I wanted to post because two (fairly) major events transpired last night. Actually, there has been a lot of good news lately (with the new job and all), but two good things happened last night in regards to poker.
There is a certain tournament I have been playing in regularly lately. I am actually loath to give up the information (it’s a very soft game), but here it is anyway. It’s the 9:30pm $50+5 pot limit tournament at Pacific (if you sign up for Pacific, please use me as a referrer-my name is chgophil). I have played in it four times to date, and have made the (four-player) final table three times. The fourth time I finished just out of the money in eighth after taking THREE rough beats in a row to knock me out. The tournament usually gets 40-80 players.
Like I said, the game is soft. Even though it’s short-handed, it’s a limp-fest from start to finish. I would estimate that I saw the flop in the big blind without putting an additional dime in the pot about 85-90% of the time. When your opponents let you see the flop for free this often, all you have to do is sit back and wait for it to hit you hard. In addition, most (not all, but I really mean MOST) of the players who play in this tournament don’t understand pot-limit at all. There are SO many times that I had a marginal hand where I was “allowed” to see the turn and river with huge pot odds (not to mention implied odds). There is nothing better than a game where you are playing proper pot-limit and everyone else it playing like it’s a limit game.
Anyway, like I said, I only have the bus ride home to write so I can’t be too verbose. I got nailed on a rough beat early to put me down to about T200 (you start with T1000). So I went into super-aggressive mode and started putting in pot-sized bets every other hand. I slowly (and I mean slowly) built back up to T1000 or so, and then went on a run of doubling through, and doubling through, and doubling through again. With six players left (which only took about 45 minutes), I was the HUGE chips leader with around T17K. Since there are so many bad players getting knocked out early, it takes quite a while to knock anyone out late, when the blinds are still pretty small and the stack sizes are big by comparison.
Anyway, we had two tables of three left. One player at my table was decent (by this tournament’s standards), and one was almost 100% predictable, and super-super awful. The two of them were getting into it all the way to the showdown every hand, so I pretty much just let them fight it out while I played only premium hands. The top five places got paid, so the ratio of stacks to blinds, plus the fact that people were essentially playing a limit game made for a long, long bubble. Eventually the terrible player knocked the not-so-terrible player out on a series of monster vs. smaller monster hands, leaving me in the money, and heads up with a really bad player.
It went well for a while. I had seen him play many, many hands, and had his betting pattern pretty much worked out. I bluffed and took the pot when I knew he had nothing, and I got the hell out of his way when he got aggressive. Drawing hands were especially profitable, since he hardly ever bet more than the minimum. Just before we got to the final table, he caught on a flush draw and took about half my stack, making him the chip leader and me the second biggest stack. In the first few hands of the final table, he took half of it again, again calling my pot-sized bet and hitting his draw on the turn (he still didn’t bet big enough to take my whole stack).
Anyway, I was down to about T5K, in third place out of four, when I took out the small stack and doubled up against the 2nd place player in the same hand with JJ (hit my set on the flop with an ace showing, bet all-in and was called in two places). Shortly after that, the bad player took out the third player, and we were heads up. I can not think of another player in that tournament (or the world for that matter) who I would rather be heads up against.
He had 3x as many chips as I did when we started, but when the dust settled I had all the chips, and took home my very first multi-table tournament win!!! It was only a 40-player tournament, but I’m still very pleased.
I am basically out of time, but I will go ahead and just mention the other major event from last night: according to my spreadsheet, the $700 I won in the tournament put me over the $10K mark for the year! Not bad for a fun little hobby.
Don’t tell the IRS.