Tag Archives: CardPlayer

If I’m Going to Live Fast and Die Young I’d Better Get On With It

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Encore Club $5,000 Guarantee

My big game for the week was the Encore on Friday night rather than Saturday because I had plans for Saturday (more of that in a bit). This game got off to a great start for me and then went all to hell as it so often does.

Several players at the table had chipped up a bit from the 9,000 starting stack, although the table behind us was the one announcing re-buys every few minutes (they’d been a late-seated table and there was a re-buy on their first hand). I was in the SB at what I think was only 50/100 still, and looked down at [8x 8x]. There was some raising ahead of me, but I had to see the flop; there was a couple thousand in the pot pre-flop.

Then the flop showed [8x 7x 2x] in a rainbow of colors. If I remember the sequence correctly, I believe I checked it. BB bet out 2,000 chips. SH—a club regular seated in HJ position—called, followed by BTN. I raised to 5,000. SB pushed all-in for 13,000+, SH shoved over the top, and I was so twitchy to get my chips into the middle I set off alarms and BTN didn’t have to think about it and folded. SB had [2x 2x] and SH had the [7x 7x], so we were set over set over set. I couldn’t have been happier as my top set held through the river and I raked in a pot of about 40,000 chips.

That was the end of the good times, though. I held my fire through to the break, playing patiently. Nut the hands weren’t coming, not even suited gappers. The one time I picked up a [ks qs] in BTN position, I was ready to make a move when SH—who had re-bought and managed to build up a decent stack by that time—shoved it in. I pushed the cards away, thinking I’d find a better spot, but it just never came. When I did make a call of a raise with a speculative hand, it got picked off by stacks large enough I just couldn’t stick with it.

Eventually, I got to the point where I was getting cut down by better hands. By the end of my night, I was down to less than 10,000 chips, picked up [as qs], and shoved from late position, hoping just to take the blinds. The player in BB looked down at her hand, called, and flipped over [ax kx], hitting the king on the river.

Three hours and forty minutes. -100% ROI. 50th of 108 players.

Tomer Drops By

It was an honor to have Tomer Berda, WSOP $2,500 No Limit Hold’em bracelet winner and #12 on Bluff‘s 2010 Player of the Year list (#22 on CardPlayer‘s 2010 list) over at the house last Saturday, as he and his friend made a trip through the Northwest. He’s been a source of inspiration and useful data since we reconnected shortly before he won his bracelet. We had the usual fantastic dinner at Khun Pic’s Bahn Thai.

Four!

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Aces Players Club 10pm Turbo (5,000 chips)

The night started off well. I was in seat three (BB) at the first table and was dealt [qx 6x]. I stayed in through the flop, hit two pair, and pushed the other players out on the turn. My second hand was [ad 3d] and I made the wheel on the flop, with several hundred in pre-flop bets in the pot. I checked, UTG2 opened for 400 and I raised to 1,000. He was the only caller. I bet another 1,500 on the turn and won. Ten minutes into the game, I was up 1,500 chips.

I won another 400 holding [ax jx]. The board double-paired itself by the turn as I was heads-up with another player and we were checking it down, then with an [ax] on the river I made a bet of 200 and took the pot. [qh 4h] made me another small pot when I caught the low pair on the flop and somehow made the best hand. “Pair of fours” became the catch-phrase of the night but it marked the turning point in my fortunes.

[kx jx] cost me 350 on one hand, then I dropped another 1,200 with [jh th] and a board that went all diamondy. The winner hit the nut flush on the flop. Still, I had 5,975 at the half-hour.

My real turn-around hand was calling an all-in of 2,800 (about half my stack) with [jd td]. It was a classic race with two over cards (suited, in my case) against a pair, but  when I went over the stats, I noticed something odd.

dyerware.com

Not only was the suited jack-ten combination favored over the pair of fives but it was the best suited connector hand overall against the lower pair, with an 8% relative advantage over even [ad kd]. According to the CardPlayer Poker Odds Calculator, something similar holds for [7x 7x] and lower, which is where the JTs combination has a better-than-even chance of winning. It didn’t in my case, however.

I went all-in on my next hand, holding [kx tx] and enough chips to get everyone except the guy to my immediate right to fold. He called and flipped [ax ax] and my initial buy-in was gone.

It was a turbo tournament, and we were already up to 200/400 by my re-buy. Raises were beginning to get even more aggressive. I called 1,600 with [as 6s] and paired the lower card on the dryish flop, but folded to an all-in from three positions to my right. He took the pot, didn’t show, then announced it had been a “pair of fours”.

I shoved the rest of my second stack shortly thereafter holding [3x 3x]. Got called by a player two seats to my left, he hit his ace on the flop and I was gone. Even a pair of fours wouldn’t have helped me.

Fifty minutes. 16th of 16 players. -100%ROI.

 

Hansen, He’s So Hot Right Now

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Talking with D a few months back, he mentioned that he and K—the only other person with a chance to win the POY title in our home series this year—had been talking together about how I’d improved, and compared my playing style to Gus Hansen. Personally, I was thinking  of myself as more of an old, fat Phil Laak, but I saw this paragraph in a report today and had to send it to them to see if perhaps it’s what they were thinking about subconciously:

Hansen’s profits over the past week have brought his 2011 earnings to a massive $4 million. However, the Danish poker pro is no stranger to fast starts. In both 2009 and 2010 Hansen opened with multi-million dollar wins in the first few months of the year, only to finish the respective calendar year in the hole.