Poker Words - A Poker Blog

Mostly a recount of my poker exploits along with a bunch of random other stuff just for fun.

Sunday, September 10, 2006

September Tournament Summary

Worst. Tournament. Ever.

After skipping quite a few months, we got together tonight for our monthly poker tournament. On the plus side, turnout was great. We had 20 people show even though we were only expecting about 15. On the negative side, I played like crap and won exactly zero dollars.

We played two tourneys. The action started off fast in the first one, with Aaron and EJ seeing a flop of AXX with two diamonds. I don’t remember the exact amounts, but it went something like this: EJ bets, Aaron raises, EJ reraises, and Aaron calls. The turn brings a third diamond, and EJ pushes all-in. Aaron agonizes over his decision for a while before folding pocket aces face up. He obviously put EJ on the flush, but I think that’s a horrible read. EJ is trying to chase away the flush draw and if he had hit the flush, probably wouldn’t have tried to push Aaron out of the pot. Later that night EJ claims to have had AK, which I have no reason to doubt. I think if it wasn’t for the fact that it was the first hand of the night Aaron would have called that bet.

A few hands later Smack makes a large preflop raise and is called by Paul. Smack checks the flop of KJ4 and Paul bets $100. Smack pushes all in and Paul insta-calls. Smack has a set of fours, Paul has pocket aces. The turn is a Q, and the river a T giving Paul the runner-runner flush to cripple smack.

A few hands after that I have Aces when Smack pushes all in. I call, and my rockets hold up, knocking him our first. Maybe I can finally gain on his commanding points lead on our leaderboard. Except that I don’t think I saw another flop rest of the game. I picked up a few small pots preflop, but other than that I sat and folded my J4o, J3o, and 85o’s for about an hour and a half. I swear Jacks, fours, threes, eights and fives were the only cards in the deck. Eventually the blinds put me out of my misery as I just couldn’t get anything going. Despite my overly tight uber folding performance I finished in 7th, which isn’t horrible, but isn’t exactly anything to be proud of.

Game two went considerably worse. For the first three or so levels my cards were absolute crap. Again I didn’t play a hand, even though my game plan was to loosen up and try to his some flops.

I was beginning to forget what paint looked like when I got KJo with Aaron and Noah in the blinds. As I’m looking at their blinds to try to figure out what level the blinds are at, and how much I should bet, they comment about how I’m eyeing their chips and how I’m probably just raising because it’s them and I’m an asshole. Noah claims that he’ll reraise me if I raise his big blind. Aaron backs up his talk by folding, and Noah just calls.

The flop is K48 and Noah leads out for $200, which is about half my remaining stack. This is why I hate playing pots against him. I have zero read. He could A) Have absolutely nothing, and just be defending his blinds. B) have something average but not great and hoping I missed the flop. C) have a pocket 4s or 8s and have hit a set, or D) have some combination of K48 and a big blind special.

I put him on a pocket pair, and I was hoping it was in the 9-Q range. I raise all in. He calls with AK and IGHN. It was probably a horrible call on my part. There wasn’t much I could beat other than a bluff and I think I put too much weight on the likelihood that he was in fact bluffing. Plus I was frustrated that that was the best hand I had seen since my aces on level two of the prior tournament that I didn’t want to lay down the hand.

I think I was definitely hurt by the fact that I haven’t been playing a lot of poker lately, I couldn’t really get in a groove and play comfortably. Although getting some decent cards every once in a while might have helped. I don’t know.

I’m still thinking about playing the PokerStars Sunday Million Guaranteed tomorrow. I probably won’t since I don’t feel like I’m on the top of my game right now, and I’ll have a fair amount of other distractions, but I really want to play in that tourney at least once, and this may be my best opportunity for quite a while, so I’ll have to see how I feel tomorrow.





Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

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