20 Table Pay Day
I went deep in my first 180 player tournament on Poker Stars last night. I was incredibly disappointed with only a 3rd place finish, as I felt through the event I was going to take it down. In review though I think I played really well, even after loosing half my stack in two back to back races I got stuck back in and kept up the fight all the way.
I don’t have any tracking software setup at the moment, so it will take me awhile to pull some hand histories from the txt files, but there is several worth talking about. I also played totally different then I have ever done before in a tournament, and I think this was key to my success, though I did run incredibly hot, so its hard to tell weather my strategy made much of a difference without employing the same strategy when I’m not running so good.
Without software it is taking me forever to parse the hand histories, so I am likely going to abandon it. Here’s a few hands I’ve highlighted so far, I’ll skip to the end and show you some from the final 3 tables later on.
Hitting the flop hard early on against the looser opponents helped me maintain a stack I could work with.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3157236
lunatic cracks aces, thankfully this beat wasn’t mine.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3157242
TP / FD, played this cheap expecting to be behind a bigger ace, and I didn’t want to reduce any implied odds by betting out with a nut draw. I could have made a small value bet on the river though.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3157251
Villain was pushing a few hands in a row here, and gave the old “I’ve got to leave, free chips” line, if it folded to me I would have still called, but after a limp call in front I felt it was too likely someone was trying to trap the all-in player.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3157254
Flopped a set and got paid. Villain doubled me up with JJ on a K high board in a raised pot, why?
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3157266
I flopped a set against the same villain who paid me off with JJ earlier, so I opted for a C/R line this time, he didn’t oblige me.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3157281
Smooth called a raise with AKs rather then 3-betting, my strategy throughout the tournament was to keep myself away from committing races and coin flips without plenty of dead money to make it worthwhile.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3157282
This was fun, I lost the previous pot to the same villain who showed back to back kings.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3157295
ah, that guy. This guy later became my nemesis as you’ll see. I 3-bet the flop to represent trips or better, firguring villain will either fold a lot of his range or go all-in with a big pair, A7 etc and I can let it go, what does villain do, smooth call, what the fuck. On the turn, I try some level 3 (is it 3?) thinking, villain should know that I know that the ace hits his range, therefore if I put him all-in, villain must suspect I can beat TP, well err along comes villain. I think this was a case of villain not wanting to fold, scared of pushing on the flop, and hoped he had flush outs on the turn. Looks like a clear push or fold to me on the flop with villains hand, but villains don’t always play how you want do they.
EDIT : lost the hand history, my 99 against villains AQs, villain had 2ovr / FD paired f, A on turn.
Another missed value bet on the river.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3157334
Not all disasters are accidents... Buy the Sole Survivors Club, by Zoe E. Whitten
