tp's table talk

Sunday night was the main event. It was the first weekly PJK Tournament organized by the lovely Felicia and I was nervous and excited. I had just had an abyssmal day at the tables on Saturday and was feeling pretty down about my poker play. It didn’t help that I was still feeling a little under the weather after my business trip last week. But, I figured that this was a good learning experience and I just had to try not to embarrass myself too badly. I think I managed that, even with a few marginal plays.

First hand, KQo in the BB, though for some reason there is no small on the first hand. I figure that I’m off to a good start, but everyone folds so all I get is the money I put in. Thankfully good hands would not be a rarity for me that night. I think I hit JJ, QQ twice and KK once in my 89 hands. I saw big slick a few times as well.

I punished Al earlier with JJ when he tried to buy the pot with AJo. I left him with T500 and he couldn’t hang long, going out second (Felicia went all-in with QQ on the second hand the tourney and ran into AA to be unlucky number one). Later on I put Grubby all-in with QQ, and it held. Against hdouble if was 89s that hit two hearts on the flop after I limped in. He re-raised me the pot and by all rights I probably should have folded, but since I had 3-4 times the chips he did, I took a chance and he was forced to call when I put him all-in after the 4h hit on the turn. He ended up having two pair on the flop and wasn’t happy to be out of the tournament.

Throughout the tournament I kept trading the chip lead back and forth with gpoker and was in pretty good shape when we merged to the final table. Roy Cooke, our guest celebrity, poker author and cardroom manager for Planet Poker, was seated at my right, and I was nervous being at the final table of a WPBT event. But my hands kept holding up and before too long Roy’s all-in AJs went down to AKo. Not long after that, I took out Antifuse with KK, which actually ended up a straight. A few hands later I had made the money. And I even had a reasonable shot at making it to the end. Alas, that was not to be.

My first problem came when I was up to T11800 in chips. This put me near to even with Mean Gene and gpoker, and a little over twice EOS‘s stack. Blinds are 200/400 and I find KJ of diamonds UTG. Good enough for me and I raise T1000. EOS calls from the button and everyone else folds. The flop comes 978, one diamond, two clubs. Not the best flop I could have hoped for, but I felt it was good enough for another T1000 bet. EOS comes back over the top all-in. Now, I’m a bit nervous here, as I had him well covered so I wasn’t sure if he would make the bet on only a draw. But if the board paired him, why would he have called the pre-flop raise, maybe A9, but I figure he probably doesn’t have a pair. Of course, while I am trying to evaluate the possibilities in my head, Planet Poker’s timer is counting down. You only get 20 seconds to make a decision, which is really not very much time. In fact, I didn’t have time to think about the 2 overcard possibility before the clock ran down and I called the T2200 to play out the hand. I was happy to see him flip over QT of spades, but half a second later I realized I lost the hand when a Q hit on the river. With the second diamond hitting on the turn, he was left with only 7 outs (2 jacks, 2 non-diamond queens and 3 non-diamond sixes) but he hit one of them and suddenly I was the short stack on the table.

The next hand two hands I made some marginal plays to lose another T3000, leaving me it pretty tenuous position.

Then came AJo on the button with T4000 left. I needed to double up and figured this I better do it here. But I wasn’t sure that an all-in bet would be called and I didn’t want to steal only the blinds (300/600 at this point), so I bet about half my stack, hoping someone would take control and come back over the top of me. As I had hoped, someone re-raised to put me all-in and I happily called. In a flash the hand was dealt, and my AJo went down in flames to EOS’s A2o that paired up on the flop. I was frustrated to have lost most of my chips on two hands where I had the best of it, but I suppose it was only fair after the good cards I had been receiving all night.

All-in-all it was a great tournament. The software was adequate, but the short timer really hurt when you had a tough decision to make. This is the first time I’ve ever been forced to call a bet online before I’d fully thought it through. I turned out to be ahead in that particular hand, but thinking about it later, I’m not sure it was a good call and I ended up losing the hand anyways. Much thanks to Felicia for getting it set up. And congrats to Genius of the Poker for winning the whole thing.

Once again, my obsession with matching players to sites rears its head so I’ve compiled a linked-up list of Sunday’s finishes. Now I just have to get around to putting together the page with the results from all the WPBT events.

PJK Tournament
1) gpoker – $199.50 (Genius of the Poker)
2) EOS – $99.75 (no site)
3) Mean_Gene – $59.85 (Mean Gene’s Poker Blog)
4) tpfelt – $39.89 (tp’s table talk)
5) Paulburbon (Paulsburbon)
6) Antifuse (Ryan’s Rantin’)
7) MaudieB (Poker Perspectives)
8) Lucas67 (Decker’s Journal)
9) Mckormick (Diary of an Online Poker Player)
10) RoyCooke (Planet Poker Cardroom Manager)
11) thechainsa (The Fat Guy)
12) RicksCafe (Rick’s Cafe)
13) PaulyMcG (Tao of Poker)
14) hdouble (The Cards Speak)
15) oysifly (???)
16) Iceyburnz (Icey in the world of Poker)
17) nevins aka Grubby (Poker Grub)
18) stinkypant (Dogs Playing Poker)
19) DontPokeMe (Don’t Poke(r) Me)
20) AlCantHang (Dead Money = AlCantHang)
21) DOMIT aka Felicia (Felicia Lee’s Poker Journal)

If I’ve made a mistake anywhere in these listings, please let me know.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 30th, 2004 at 3:21 pm and is filed under Poker. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.