I’m going to try and be better about posting now that I’ve been playing on a more regular basis again. Since my last post, I played in around 10 tourneys at the old card room with buy-ins between $30 and $100. For the most part, I went out in the middle rounds, usually after having been short-stacked for a while. I did win a $20 satellite into the Friday night $100 game in the middle of April and I won a few of the semi-drunken $5 friendly tourneys at the bar below the card room, but showed no real profit. There were no notable results in April, I didn’t play much in May due to an impending move.
In June, I moved to a town that has gone poker-crazy since I last lived here almost 5 years ago. There are two proper, nearly casino-quality card rooms and several passable rooms in bars. I reloaded my bankroll on June 16th and, with a couple good $1/2 sessions off the bat, had more than doubled it. I followed up with a couple losing sessions that knocked down my profit to a mere $20.
On Monday, I cashed in a $20+5 tourney at one of the local rooms. They run a nice, big tourney with probably around 90 players–8 full tables and plenty of alternates. I played tight and got bluffed off a big hand early by a LAG donkey. I had K2s on the SB and completed to see a flop. Flop comes 332-rainbow and UTG LAG-donkey bets about 1/3 the pot. I call with two pair and a backdoor flush draw. Turn comes another deuce and UTG leads out for a pot-sized bet. I couldn’t just call off almost half my stack so it was between pushing and folding. In the end I decided it was too likely that our villain had limped with a J3o or other raggedy hand so I folded. While I was in the tank, he said he had the trey, which I should have known was a strong = weak tell. In the end, I decided I just didn’t want to risk my tourney life on whether he got lucky or not. He showed 56o and won a decent pot with a gutshot on a paired board. A few hands later I got him back, though, when I flopped a pair of Aces with ATo. He check/flat called all the way to the river and then moved in with rags UTG and I doubled through and he was out a few hands later. I doubled up again near the end of the 2nd hour with Jc3c from the BB when the flop came J-high with 2 clubs and I pushed my smallish stack. I got lucky and hit the flush vs. a bigger J. After that I played a pretty textbook TAG short-stack game that got me to the final table, finally finishing in 6th for $70.
I made a mistake on my last hand and it’s a situation I’ll try and remember in the future. I started in the BB with T10k. The blinds had just gone up to T3000/6000, so had 2/3rds of my stack in on the blind. UTG raised to T18k and it folded around to the aggressive chip leader and table captain who re-raised all-in from the button. I put my remaining T4k in without even looking at my cards and the original raiser says, “Well, I guess I have to call.” I’ve got my money in bad with 59s vs AK and the captain’s AA. The chip leader knocks us both out and I finish 6th instead of 5th, since I had less chips going into the hand. I should have realized that the UTG was pot committed having raised nearly half his stack UTG and that the button stood a fair chance of knocking him out. I basically cost myself $30 by playing the pot-odds instead of playing the tourney situation. Had I folded, even being pot committed, I would have had a good chance at squeaking into at least 5th or even higher payout position, since the blinds were so large and even the big-stacks only had Ms of <20.
♠♠ No-Limit Hold 'em ♠♠ 