tp's table talk

Unfortunately there was no poker in the Carribean, which was made even more frustrating by the people we met at the casino that I know would have been sitting at the poker table. Would have been a very loose table, but very profitable with a little patience. Alas, it was not to be.

This Friday was the usual home tourney, but I had a little trouble getting going. Getting bad cards and playing pretty loosely. And worse of all, I’m giving out tells like it’s going out of style, I just can’t control myself. But somehow I manage to hold on to the later stages. Down to 4 with 2 big stacks, 2 small stacks, with mine the smallest of all. Suddenly the two big stacks go to war and one is decimated when trip aces fall to quad 2s. Suddenly there are three short stacks. But I’m likely to be blinded off first. I find KJc and put in my remaining chips, now less than the big blind after the long hand between the two large stacks. It holds up. Now I’ve got over twice the big blind and push on the next hand when I find ATo. The big stack folds his small blind but the big blind calls his remaining T30 chips. A 9 on the flop and I’m back to being allin in the big blind on the next hand. I’m called by the third short stack and the other two fold, leaving me committing only half my stack to cover him. It’s my 74o versus his T8o. The flop is 8KK, leaving me drawing very, very thin. But the turn is a 6 and the river the improbably 5 to keep me from going all-in in the small blind. But when the remaining small stack pushes in (he has me covered, barely) I have to follow suit with presto. The big stack calls and they flip over KJ and KT. I’m feeling much better about my chances. Still not 50% to win, but more likely than either of the other two. Unfortunately a jack hits on the flop and the other short stack triples up. Of course, he’s at about a 7-1 chip disadvantage, so it’s not long before he’s eliminated as well. But considering that I figured my chances of making the money (top 3 paid) were pretty poor, I was happy to get away with something.

Also had a strange occurrance earlier in the week. I got a call from a host at Absolute Poker who set me up with some better than normal bonuses. Nothing ridiculous, but more than the typical reloads they offer and it was nice to get the personal touch. Very strange though, as I’ve never played all that much at Absolute. I guess they are serious about trying to compete with the big boys. They do have solid software though, so I suppose all they need is the numbers.

Despite running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to take care of some remaining errands before I depart for the sunny Dominican Republic, I was able to make it home for the WPBT event last night. With about five minutes to spare. In my first hand I found a pair of sixes in the big blind. I was still out of sorts from my rush to get back to my apartment, but when Helixx raised me from late position, I think I raised him right back. He called and though I forget the exact sequence of play, I folded under the continued pressure he put on me. I believed the sixes were good, but it just wasn’t worth losing any more money on. I would have my revenge later.

Play was pretty tight at the table, but I was looking up information about my vacation, so wasn’t paying quite enough attention to take full advantage. But I was slowly rebuilding all the chips I lost on that first hand. I was motoring right along when there was another late position raise from Helixx. But this time I had AKs in the small blind, so my re-raise had a bit more weight behind it. He tossed even more chips into the pot, putting me almost all-in. I had been paying enough attention to the table to know that he was playing hyper-aggressive, so I called the bet. He flipped over … The Hammer^TM. And when a K hit on the flop, I was happy. The turn was a 2, which put a bit of a scare in me after Pauly‘s display of Hammer mastery just a few hands previously. Fortunately the river was a blank and I had doubled up and started focusing a bit more.

Not much spectacular occurred over the next few levels. I kept stealing the occasional blind, but mostly just tried to wait out my mediocre cards. Unfortunately, my patience only went so far, as at the 100/200 level, I found myself in the small blind with sailboats. It was folded around to the button who raised it to T500. Now, I figured he could be raising from position with just about anything, so I re-raised to T1500 of my T3600, figuring that most of his hands there couldn’t take much pressure. Of course, I probably should have put a bit more pressure than that, but it was only my first mistake. He raised me back all-in and after a bit of thought, I pegged him for a bully and called. Of course, regardless of what hand he chose to be bully with, it still had me in a 50/50 situation. He flips over AJ of clubs, a jack hits on the flop, and I’m out in 47th place. I don’t think he made a great play there, but my play was nothing to write home about either. Regardless, I needed some more chips if I wanted to make a push for the real money, so once the T1500 went in, I was going to have a hard time not following it up. Congratulations to on_thg for walking away with first place and $906.

Also worth mentioning is the great job Sean (from Anistropy) and Pauly (you know where he’s from) have done putting together the official WPBT site. It has all the information you might need about the Poker Blogger tournaments, as well as a leaderboard that Sean is starting up with this year’s results. I had started working on something like this myself last year, but I never followed through. I’m happy to see that someone has gotten this information collected. And if you want to check out the results from last night’s tournament, just head on over.