Not a bad few days poker since my last update. Last week I played a great live tournament, which I chopped for 1st in. Some of the players were pretty good. On my original table there was a player I recognise from high stakes cash games at a local casino sitting on my left. He was the only person I was looking out for, as I have played with him before and knew a fair bit about they way he plays. I didn’t know anything about any of the other players on the table, with the exception of two players chatting to each other about poker, clearly trying to impress.
“I was playing online today and got a pair of hooks”
People giving hands their nicknames always makes me laugh.
“I raised and two people called. The flop was AKx, so I went all-in”
No prizes for guessing that one of the pre-flop callers had an ace. I later found out this particular player works in a local supermarket. Normally this wouldn’t mean much, but given that this was a re-buy tournament, and as you can imagine she bought in a fair few times, I think she probably dropped a few days wages.
She was actually a really nice lady, certainly livened up my table. True to form when I play people like this, she doubled when I flopped a straight and she rivered a flush to take the pot in a very frustrating fashion:
“Oh never mind, I though I had something”
“You have a flush”
“Does that mean I win?”
At this point the dealer decided to wake up and declare her the winner of the hand.
She actually apologised for winning the hand. I wasn’t too annoyed at this point as we still had plenty of time left in the rebuy period. About two hands later, when a very quiet player who was sitting two to my left busted, I saw that he used all of the money in his wallet to rebuy. Not the best read in the world but my live poker being as primitive as it is I decided I was happy that I picked up on it.
I was amazed at all the little things I picked up on that I never would have online. Someone I would consider to be a good player on my table had a nice ornate card protector (hand nicknames again!). Each time he intended to play a hand he left it on his cards, and when he wasn’t going to play he took it off. He stayed at my table all night and eventually busted in 3rd.
The heads-up part of this tournament was crazy. 4 handed I had half the chips at the table. Over the next 4-5 hands one of the other players busted the two remaining players to give us even stacks. I had been thinking about my strategy HU for about 10 minutes. All of it useless now as I was not facing the short stack I thought I would be.
We played HU for just under 2 blind levels. My opponent was pretty good, aggressive in the right places and I think he felt he could beat me. It was a real low M battle, and became a bit of a crapshoot.
I lost a big pot giving him a 4-1 chip lead. I pushed blind next hand and doubled. A few hands later we were even again. The next blind level was 2 minutes away and we were about to have so few BB each that it was no longer a much of a game. I worked out the average of second and first place money an offered him the chop.
He accepted so fast I was taken back a little. He later commented that it was a close match-up and it could have gone either way. He also said after a while at the final table he was happy to play anyone heads-up for the tournament except for me.
Overall I was happy with my performance. The mix of good and bad players went very well for me, and I felt confident in my ability to determine who was who. I only hope that next time I play live I can extend on this.
No comments:
Post a Comment