There really is very little to say about my Bellagio $1k Daily Toruney #11. It was one of the grimmest tourneys I ever played where I barely won a hand, sat bored for a few hours and finally lost a coin flip. Nuff said.

Tourney #12 was back to Caesar’s Palace for another try at the $340 Mega-Stack Series with 188 runners and 15,000 start chips, I finally got off to a good start thanks to some luck on the river:

My Stack ~15k, Seat 7 ~15k, Blinds 25/50, I hold Kd9d in the BB.

Seat 7 opens for 150, three callers and I call for value from BB: flop 976hh. Checks around and turn’s 9c. I bet out 525 into the 750 pot and Seat 7 makes it 1700 to go. I think that he might have flopped a set or straight, but it seems unlikely that he checks this with the board texture, so most likely he also has a 9 and my kicker is pretty good. I decide to call and hit a magic King on the river. I check because I know he’s going to bet and he makes it 2700. I say to him, quite deceptively, “did you really make a full-house on the turn…I don’t believe you” and throw out his bet plus a single 5k chip. He calls with A9. Nice river!

I soon get involved with the same guy again:

My Stack ~23k, Seat 7 ~7k, Blinds 50/100, I hold 22 UTG

I limp and Seat 7 makes it 500. I can see that he has only ~7k and I don’t really have enough implied odds to call, but then the button calls the 500 with ~10k and I figure that’s enough to give me value.

Pot 1650
Flop J82 rainbow

I check because I know he wants to bet at this flop. He makes it 1200, button folds and I announce raise. I then throw the 1200 into the pot so that the dealer can pull the bets in before I decide on how much to raise. As soon as I’ve done this, Seat 7 pushes all of his chips into the pot. The dealer tells him to take them back as I haven’t raised yet, but I believe that his chips need to stay in the pot if I match their value. We call the floor. Incredibly, not one, but two floor staff both incorrectly rule that no matter what I do, Seat 7’s chips are not yet in the pot and he can do what he likes. Meanwhile they also correctly rule that I must make at least a minimum raise of 1200. I’m quite gobsmacked that they don’t understand the basic rule that an out-of-turn action is binding if the pending action does not invalidate the out-of-turn action, but I try not to act or appear too upset by this because I don’t want to reveal the strength of my hand. So I quietly accept the ruling and make a min-raise in order to appear like I may fold to his expected shove. Thankfully, he decides to shove and I call. I take a few seconds to put the correct amount of chips into the pot and he then turns over KJ. I show him my set and he says “You slow-rolled me!” I don’t feel that I did as I just wanted to be sure to get all of his chips into the pot.

Seat 7 was replaced by a young African-American guy who acted really cool and friendly, but played like an absolute maniac. His stack oscillated, but just before my major hand with him he managed to get a full double-up when he flopped trips versus TPTK on a J44 flop:

My Stack ~30k, Seat 7 ~25k, Blinds 100/200/25, I hold AJo in the CO

Seat 7 opens from EP for 500 and I call. I might normally fold AJo in this spot, but I felt there was a lot of value versus this player.

Pot 1550
Flop J96 rainbow

Remembering the previous hand, I just call his bet of 1500. Turn A and he bets 2500. I call for value because he will bluff most rivers.

Pot ~9.5k
River T

He picks up three 5k chips and holds them for a moment. I say “Are you sure you want to bet so much” to give him the impression that I might not like to call that much (which also happens to be true, but, whatever). As soon as I say this he naturally flicks all 15k into the pot and I think about it for a while. It is possible that he rivered a straight, but it seems pretty unlikely as this would be a gutshot with a hand like KQ. I discount that. He could have flopped a set, but that seems wrong too. Altogether I can’t think of anything that makes sense that beats me so I call and I’m good. Phew! That was my best call of the series, given that it would have crippled me if I was wrong. He was monkey-tilted by my call, saying that I’m good enough to fold there. He soon donked-off the rest of his chips, but unfortunately not to me.

For the next key hand, I’m not going to immediately tell you what I had because it will spoil the story of the hand:

My Stack ~45k, Seat 1 ~20k, Seat 6 ~90k, Blinds 200/400/50

Seat 1 opens from EP for 1200 and I decide to call for value from MP because Seat 1 seems to be an incompetent older German tourist. Seat 6 is OTB and is a good-natured middle-aged French guy who appears capable of playing quite a creative game and making moves. He has also been running incredibly well. He makes it 3000 to go, Seat 1 calls and I call.

Pot ~10k
Flop QhJd5s

I immediately realise that I have flopped an OESD (I have KT), checks to Seat 6 and he makes it 6k and Seat 1 folds. I figure getting 3-2 with good implied odds is enough to chase my draw to the nuts, so I call.

Pot ~22k
Turn Qs

I had put him on most likely holding AA/KK/AK based on his flop action and, as such, the turn seemed like a good card for me to represent trip Qs or even a boat, based on my flop action. I considered that he was smart enough to read my actions so that if I did actually hold trips or a boat I would not want to kill my action by betting strong, so I decided check and then just call his bet. When he bet only 8k, I realised that if I called that with 28k behind, my stack was a kinda ok to bluff-shove any river, with some fold equity there versus AA/KK and obviously lots versus AK.

Pot ~38k
River 6s

The flush coming-in on the river gave me, in my opinion, even more fold equity so I confidently shoved in my remaining 28k. He sighed, looked extremely pained, but finally called and I was shell-shocked that I’d managed to bluff-off my healthy stack. I mucked and he flipped-up AQ. Of course I was never getting him to fold one of the hands that I was representing and perhaps I should have noticed that his small turn bet was trips. I was getting-up to leave when the dealer turned-up my cards: KsTs. WHAT!!! In my focus on chasing my OESD plus constructing my bluff-line on the turn/river, I had completely forgotten that I had spades. I am officially a retard at this point. The Frenchman was upset, not with me, but with the dealer, claiming that he should have mucked my cards. In fact, the dealer was entirely correct as it is a rule of tournament poker that both hands must be tabled during an all-in showdown to prevent collusion/chip-dumping. After the dust had settled, I found myself with 96k and probably the tourney chip-leader at this early stage. Wow!

I was perhaps still a little dazed by what had happened when this happened a few hands later:

My Stack ~95k, Seat 4 ~10k, Seat 10 ~40k, Blinds 200/400/50, I hold Kd9d in BB

Seat 4 had been playing extremely tight and limped UTG. Seat 10 called: he was a young Asian kid and one of the loosest live players I’ve ever seen. He had got lucky to chip-up hitting draws, but massively over-valued his hands and would readily go broke on any top pair or drawing hand. I checked my option:

Pot 1900
Flop AK9cc

I check and Seat 4 shoves all-in. Seat 10 then decides to call and I’m thinking whether my hand is good here or not. Meanwhile Seat 4 does not realise that I’m still in the hand and starts to flip up his cards before Seat 5 tells him to keep them hidden. I accidentally see an Ace and a card that my brain tells me is a Nine. What I had actually seen was a card with four hearts on one side (i.e. either a Nine or a Ten). I decide to take the conservative route and fold.

I’m kinda upset as Seat 4 tables AT and even more so when I see that Seat 5 has called with A5. Had Seat 4 not made a mistake and revealed most of the information about his hand to me, I most certainly would have called and probably would have shoved to isolate (and may also still have attracted a loose call from Seat 10). Naturally the board bricks out and I missed out on at least 20k extra. I still have one of the biggest stacks in the tourney, but I’m a little tilted by having a live mistake by my opponent cost me chips, but perhaps I deserved that after trying to muck the winner earlier – a bit of karma.

Next key hand:

My Stack ~90k, Seat 8 ~40k, Blinds 300/600/75, I hold TT in MP

I open for 1600 and Seat 8 makes it 4200 to go OTB. He is a young online player who plays perhaps a similar style to my own and is certainly capable of making creative moves. I know he values his button and he has probably observed that I’m opening pots relatively frequently. So he can be making this play with a wide-range of hands. I elect to just call and see a flop:

Pot ~10k
Flop 985cc

I check and he makes it 8k with ~28k behind. I figure that I’m good here a lot of the time and I also may get him to fold out JJ, as well as some flush and straight draws. I move-in and he reluctantly tank-folds. I table TT, saying “Could you beat that?” and he tells the table it was QQ. It wasn’t, but whatever.

My Stack ~110k, Seat 5 ~16k, Blinds 400/800/100, I hold KK in SB

Seat 5 makes it 2k from UTG and before I look at my cards, I tell Seat 4 that he’s bullying him because he’s playing so tight. Seat 5 is a middle-aged American and has shown some tilt at my table banter (I like to chat it up at the table). While I’m still chatting I peek at KK and keep my composure before casually throwing out the call. Seat 4 folds and I announce “Check-in-the-dark.” Flop was T-high or something like that and, as expected, he jams his remaining stack into the pot. I snap-call and hold versus his AJ.

I reached around 130k before bleed down to ~90k. Some of this was running AJ into Seat 8’s short-stack 3-bet shove with AQ in the 600/1200/100 level and some of it on this hand:

My Stack ~110k, Seat 9 ~60k, Blinds 800/1600/200, I hold 72o in BB

Seat 9 is a young guy with lots of moves. His stack has oscillated up to 100k and then down below 50k when he bluffed-off half of it on a 3-bet cold-bluff with AJo on a K-high rainbow flop, snapped-off by the jolly French guy with just 88. He limps from HJ, SB completes and I check my option. Flop A65dd. Checks to him and he bets out 3k. I feel this is kinda weak and don’t ever see this player limping an Ace. At the same time, I don’t like to C/R bluff here because of his propensity to 3-bet bluff and obviously I can’t call. So I call with the intention of taking it down later. Turn was an offsuit deuce and we both check. River is another Ace and I feel that I can bluff him off whatever he has here. So I make it 7k into the 13k pot, which might be a little on the small side, but I wanted it to look like I had the trips. He tank-called with 67. Damn!

That knocked me back a bit and I tightened-up for a while. The blinds and the average chip counts crept up, new big stacks emerged and I felt like I needed to get my stack moving in the right direction again. Here is the key moment:

My Stack ~90k, Seat 6 ~90k, Seat 10 ~24k, Blinds 1000/2000/300, I hold 7c9c in BB

Seats 6 and 10 are different players than those earlier. Seat 6 is a middle-aged Italian-American who has just sat at the table, but has a lot of ante chips, so I assume he is an active player. Seat 10 seems kinda tight.

UTG limps and Seat 6 makes a min-raise to 4k. I’m thinking like WTF is that, then Seat 10 cold call the 4k with only 20k behind. He must have a monster. It folds to my BB and its only 2k more for my speculative hand, so I call and Seat 4 makes up the 2k.

Pot ~20k
Flop 765ss

Checks to Seat 6 and he makes a very weak looking bet of 6k, which feels a lot like a draw. Seat 10 moves-in with an obvious slow-played premium pair and I’m left thinking about the situation. There is 46k in the pot and it is 20k for me to call. That means I only need 30% to make the call. I figure versus his obvious overpair I must have 9 outs (two 7s, four 8s and three 9s), which will give me around 33%.

There is the problem, however, of Seat 6. If I just call and he decides to shove (or just call) there will be a massive pot with me having 66k behind. The blinds will soon be 1500/3000/400, so I don’t want to hang around and let myself get short. I figure that Seat 6 doesn’t look strong and can’t call a shove from me. If he can he is only doing so with an overpair (or maybe a flush draw) and I still feel I have a lot of outs. Of course there is a remote possibility that he has 89, but it seems quite likely that he has no-pair flush draws and straight draws, where I might actually get value if he makes a bad call.

My philosophy when it comes to tournament poker is to play to win. That means winning all the chips and often that means making bold aggressive plays to try to acquire as many chips as possible. I was also aware that with ~38 players left, we would soon be approaching the money bubble and I wanted to gamble for a stack where I could abuse the short-stack given the very high antes.

I figured that if I make the +EV play versus Seat 10, therefore, I have to isolate the player by getting Seat 6 out of there, so I decided to shove. Seat 6 looked like he didn’t want to call off all of his chips. He was close to folding, but finally he said that it was late and he wanted to gamble. He showed me my worst nightmare for any hand that had trouble calling: 88. Jeez! I basically was left with only 4 outs and then one guy said he’d folded an 8 too, so I had 3 outs. I felt sick having ~11% chance of winning a massive pot instead of 33%.

I bricked-out and had blown-up in spectacular fashion. I’m a little upset by going out in that way on my first deep run on this trip, but I think that the structure and the payouts dictate highly aggressive play and it was just a major cooler that he had 88.

First time I’ve had a big-stack on this trip and it felt good for a while. I made some good plays and after writing this up I don’t feel too bad about my play. Perhaps I wouldn’t make the play in a higher buy-in tourney, but these $340s paying ~$13k to the winner are really all about going for first place without fear. I made the plays for that and perhaps just got unlucky in the end.

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