2 Tournies in 1 night ...

which always means I busted out of the first quite early.

I didn't play the 10:00 $55 Crypto tonight, as the play has been quite strong there, so I played in the $25 on Ladbrokes. Its a slower structure, and I didn't need to get up early so it seemed like a good idea.

I didn't last long though. Blinds 25/50 I was dealt 73o in the BB. an EP player min-raised and there were 3 other callers, so I stuck in the 50 getting 9:1. The flop was a dream Q73 (2 hearts). I check. EP bets 150 everyone flat calls round to me. Now I put EP on AA/KK/QQ/JJ/AK/AQ/KQ, and going by his play so far he's not laying down the Jacks. If he's got QQ so bad. So I push, and he calls with KQ, and turns a Q. Thank you for playing.

So I then hit the 10:30 $22 back on Crypto where the play is similarly terrible. 83 runners. All my old tricks of raising with any-two and continuation betting most flops worked a treat, and I was pretty sure if anyone played back at me they had a hand.

I had a stroke of luck when my QQ beat an opponents AA, but other than that I played pretty well. Some nice re-steals from one particularly weak player (once with JJ, twice with air) and some decent post-flop play, but with the tight play few people busted and the blinds raced up. I did pretty well on the bubble (which took ages - we were at 12 for *so* long) and built much of my stack at this point, and also OK on the FT, push-botting OK and getting my chips in in decent shape when I called. Only the top 2 positions were very lucrative (600/400/240/200/160 ...) so typically I came in third. I made a rash (ish) push from the SB with 92o (he'd been pretty weak up until this point, and the blinds were pretty big and ran into the worst possible hand - 99.

Still a bit more to add to the bankroll (~$3250 now).

5th in the 6k

I entered the £22, 6k guaranteed tourny last night and came in a very creditable 5th place for £370. Good money - but the winner (who played very well) got over £1500.

I've read through the hand history a couple of times and here are the high (and low-)lights

I doubled up three times reasonably early.
1) Blinds 15/30. Holding AKo Raise to 120 from MP. 2 callers. Flop
79A. Double up off opponent holding AJ
2) Blinds 50/100. QQ. Raise to 300 from the CO. Button pushed for
3.6k. I call. He flips AK and I hold up. Playing 7k now.
3) Blinds 150/300/25. KK in SB. Folded round to me. I complete. BB pushes(!). I call. He has 95o(!!), and flops a gut-shotstraight draw which misses. Apparently his wife was watching and berates him for the play. Chuckle. 14k chips.
I'm clearly a bit lucky to get such muppet play as that, with players massively overplaying their bluffs, and unable to lay down AJ. Plus the coin-flip with the Queens helped.

After that it was up and down for a while.
Blinds 200/400/50a. 44 in BB. Call a push to 1590 from SB who has 99. Down to 12k
Button raise w/k3o is defended. I give up. 9k
Blinds 400/800/100a. M=5. Push from button with Q8. SB calls with 77, and I flop a straight. 17k in chips
Woo-hoo! I got lucky when I needed to in this tournament, and whilst playing solidly I didn't really out-play opponents too many times.

Raise UTG+1 to 2400 with AT. Fold to a MP push.
I'm raise-folding far too much at the moment. I've got to be calling with a higher percentage of my hands, and I think in these tournaments that means raising less and re-raising more. Ho hum.

Raise button to 2400 with A2. SB and BB both call and I fold on a K89 flop. 10k.
Push UTG with K9s. (M=5). Win uncontested.
Button pushes for 4.4k. I re-raise in SB to 10k with 99 and win against his 89o. Up to 16k
(next hand). UTG raises to 5k. I re-raise push on button with KQo and win against his JTs. Up to 25k

Although I'm getting much better at my short-stack play, identifying when opponents are pushing with any two and re-raising to isolate.

600/1200/150a K8 in BB. SB completes. I check. Flop AAQ. Check-Check. Turn 8. I am check-raised, call and call a bet on
a rivered King. He had AJ. nh. Down to 12k

I've gotta check this turn against a thinking opponent. There's really not much he's going to call with that I'm beating and I should have kept the pot small. The K on the river improves things for me, but I shouldn't have bloated the pot allowing a much larger river bet.

Push Qj from SB. Win
Push A4 from HJ. Win
Push AK from MP. Win 21k.

My small stack pushed worked in this tourny with no one really wanting to gamble it up.

16000/800/200a. M=4.5. Push from HJ with KT. Win
BB with 99. Call Shorties push. He has 77, and wins.

Only bad beat of the tourney (!).

SB with AJ. Push my 14k, and double through against BBs TT.

Getting marginally lucky again

Button raise to 4800 with QJs. Fold to BB defend.

Bad play. Stop raise-folding.

UTG pushes to 37.3k. I'm in CO w/AQ. I fold (?!)
I wasn't at all sure about this. It was a big bet, and it was very hard to assign villain a range here. Anyway I folded - which was a probably mistake as the BB called and both showed smaller aces than me.


1200/2400/300a (M=3) Push K9 from MP. Win.
Raise 3x with QQ from MP. Call SB pushes for 4k more. Both call. Flop rags. Push/Call. We've both got QQ. 42k

Raise 4x from button with 33. Bet 10k into A92 board, and fold to a push. Good fold, bad cont bet(?) 20k

Bet-fold AGAIN! Stop it. Make others fold to your bets. I'm making moves that work on smaller tables, but not here.

Push ATo
Push AKo over early raiser and scoop 64k
See a free flop with 63d. Flop K22. 2 diamonds. I check-min-reraise flop bet to get a free card. Turn is a 3rd diamond which We both check. River 9c, which I value bet for 12000. Get a call from QQ(with Qd) 93k

Hmmm. I actually like the min-reraise here. It smells of strength, and has a good chance of allowing me to see the river for free. Having hit my flush on the turn the check is a bit meh, as a fourth diamond on the river leaves me in a horrible spot.


Last hand:
Interesting stacks (93k/25k/24k/170k/90k(me)) ATo UTG I raise 3x. BB calls. Flop 456r. Check-Check. Turn 9. He bets 15000, I push, he calls with a set of 9s. nh, gg etc etc.

I spent some time wondering about this hand. When I went to bed I thought I'd got it wrong, but by the time I went to sleep I was more happy. Villain here was the table captain. He is a high-stakes cash game player and was just starting to bully people around. The chips he won of me allowed him to walk the remainder of the tourney whilst the other three players tried to fold into second. I don't really mind taking a stand here. I have to at some stage and if I can't be folding hoping that others will get knocked out first. Sure, my timing sucked, but there isn't really anything I can do.

Bankroll up above $3k. Just.

Better, much better

The wife turned in early tonight so I had a crack at the 9.30 £22 tourny, with a £6k guarantee.

I played much, much better than last night in an admittedly weaker field. I'd had a selection of hands, although nothing too dramatic and was managing to avoid trouble, keeping ahead of the rising blinds quite well.

Just after the second break though (about 70 left from a starting 300) I lost about 85% of my chips though in another silly attempt to defend my blinds. There was one raiser in front of me and I pushed, but I didn't think it through really as

1) He was raising from MP, not too late so had to have some sort of hand
2) I 'only' had A7s, which is probably going to leave me dominated if called.
3) He'd played reasonably tight till this point.

The stack sizes (6.3k for him, 6.9k for me; blinds 150/300/25a) were approaching a reasonable restealing point.

Anyway he had Jacks, which held up.

I thrashed around after this trying to get back into the game, and managed to triple up to 2.5k, and called a push from shorty in the BB when I was holding K8s. I thought he was pushing any two being so short (he should be) and actually he was (K2s - although he flopped a flush draw and rivered a 2). Another treble up followed (from a *very* low base) but I couldn't get back in the game.

Still a lot better than recently. The field was weaker and my play better. Shame I'm not going to be able to play in the tourny at all regularly (too early).

Well, a cash - but not entirely satisfactory

Finished 12th in the $4500 this evening for a cash of $54 (a $1 loss on the evening).

For the first time in ages I got some cards early - in fact I moved from my starting 1500 chips to 6000 quite quickly. I had the great good fortune early to be dealt KK against two players with QQ, and then I flopped a flush and (separately) a straight. The flush I played quite well, but the straight I played quite badly - being afraid of action and make large bets on the flop and turn to drive my opponent away.

Its quite hard to steal blinds in this tourny, as people defend their blinds so often, and I played badly in this regard. Raise/folding a bit and not defending on a couple of occasions.

I had one outrageous piece of good fortune in the middle game when I did make a move. Blinds 150/300 I'm playing a stack of 6.5k and raise to 900 from the CO. The button flat calls. Junk flop of 743 2 diamonds. I check - he bets 1500 (as I knew he would) but I misjudge his hand completely and check-raise him all-in (to 5600) and he turns over QQ. He thought for a bit before making the call and I wonder if he's actually considering passing. Probably not, but I'm not sure he was convinced he was ahead. Anyway turn 5, river 6 for an unlikely straight.

I'm not playing 12/13k and in the top 3.

I made a couple of good moves against poor-ish players, but lost a lot of chips when I raise to 900 with AQ from MP and the SB calls. Flop A94r. Looks good. SB bets 900, I raise to 2100, and they 3-bet me all-in to 6415. Perhaps I should be able to find a fold here. Its a brave move from them - and although you occasionally get check-raised with air (see above) I've never seen anyone 3-bet that light.

So, what can they have. 44/99/AK/A9 are I guess the most likely, possibly AQ as well. I'm not sure they are making this move with AT/AJ. Anyway I call and they are actually playing A4. So I've got 3 Queens, 3nines, and 3 kings after the turn, but they miss. I'm getting 2.5:1 on the call, so amazingly I've got the odds to call here (pokerstove tells me its 28.7:71.3 - exaclty 2.5:1), but I'm not that normally. Against a more realistic range as above I'm only 15%. I should have folded. Anyway with a shorter stack I play a lot better and stick my chips in with air a couple of time before getting called by the BB's QQ when I push with 56o from the button.

I'm not at all happy with my play tonight. I played far too scared in the middle period and should have been more aggressive on the bubble too. I could perhaps have laid down the AQ hand too.

Maybe I'll move back down to the $25 level after all.

A move I very rarely make is ...

to push with a weak hand from the blinds when the blinds are large and there are a number of limpers in the pot.

I did today and ... BUSTO!

I'd continued my spell of reasoanbly weak cards - apart from a turned set of nines early on (which I missed a value bet on the river, trying to induce a bluff from a missed flush), but with blinds at 50/100 I picked up

KK UTG+1 (raised 3x picked up blinds - I hadn't played a hand in ages so I should certainly get respect here)
xx UTG (folded)
AJ BB (called shorties push and lost to his AQ
xx SB (folded)
KK Button (raised to 400 pre-flop (2-limpers, i could have raised more or even pushed here) and folded to an open-push on a Axx flop.
AKs CO (pushed over a limper and he called with AJ - I double up)

So after the best run of starting hands I've had in a while I move from about 1800 to 2200. Fantastic.

Anyway an orbit or two later, I'm playing about 2100, and in the SB (which is 75) and there are 4 limpers to me. I'm holding junk 78o, but I try TheMove and push - the BB, and the first 3 limpers fold, but the button calls with TT. I flop a 7, but no more help.

My bankroll is ~$2.5k now, down from about $3.2k. If it drops below about $2k I may have to consider moving back down the levels, which would be a shame.

The dry spell continues

I've been busting out of tournaments for a couple of weeks no with no real cashes, and very few hands to be honest.

Last night I at least managed to get reasonably deep (31st out of 110) and enjoyed the game more than for a while. I've kept running into aces, and all my recent bluff attempts have been failing, but last night I wasn't called when I bluffed (for a bit) and I was able to keep out of the way of big hands having made a couple of decent lay-downs.

I still never had a large stack - in fact I can't remember when I last reached 2x my buy-in - but I did OK considering. I made a foolish bluff into a dangerous board on the penultimate hand, and got it all-in the next hand with my 33 running into KQs. There were several limers so my stack would have gone up at least 2.5 times if they had held up but he flopped a King, and me a flush draw. As I'm running badly at the moment it missed.

Que sera etc etc.

Quiet times.

He was pushing with air!

After lasts night post I made a brave/stupid call and he was bluffing!

I have a stack of 2650 on the button, the cut-off who has 3000 chips raises to 600 (blinds 75/100). I've just doubled up (outrageously) having had no cards since the tourny started. I call the raise, holding 99, and the blinds fold. Flop 582. He checks; I bet 900, leaving me 1100 behind. Before I bet I reckon if he raises me here I'm probably beat. He raises me (all-in). I'm getting huge odds on the call and am really short if I fold and he doesn't have to be bluffing much to make it worth my while, so I call. He turns over AK and spikes a K on the turn.

With the stacks as they are the bet-size doesn't feel right whatever I do. I'm not getting away from the hand, but I have enough to want to induce a bluff from AK (as I did). Assuming I'm not folding this, and not checking behind it may be the odd-sized bet is right - and here it is villain who is making a mistake with the CR as I've not got enough to bet-fold.

Notes to self:
1) I need to consider opponents plays at all stages of a hand, not merely pre-flop
2) I need to consider stack/pot sizes and how it will play out (the above being a good example).
3) I need to concentrate more at the begninning of tournies and take more notes. I did this when I was 'new' to the $55/£25 level, as I felt I needed to concentrate to give me an edge. I don't, I do have a small edge, but I'm just throwing money away by not concentrating.