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Winning via Tiltsville

I had a little 3 hour session last night and the evening couldn't have started any worse. Two hands in particular sent me to Tiltsville Arizona. The first was in the daily $27.50 MTT on Stars, after running my 3k starting stack up to 10k I get seated at a table with a complete donk who had a similar chip stack...

AK less than K3

PokerStars Game #51052811283: Tournament #318977735, $25.00+$2.50 USD Hold'em No Limit - Level XI (100/200) - 2010/10/13 22:14:20 WET [2010/10/13 17:14:20 ET]
Table '318977735 7' 9-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: GeorgeGunner (9597 in chips)
Seat 2: justyxas (12273 in chips)
Seat 4: FezioJnr (9301 in chips)
Seat 5: Mintal703 (6360 in chips)
Seat 6: Pig's Eye 1 (9546 in chips)
Seat 7: moverdave (11890 in chips)
Seat 8: TrapoLeproso (6263 in chips)
Seat 9: Hepburn1 (3887 in chips)
justyxas: posts small blind 100
FezioJnr: posts big blind 200
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to FezioJnr [Kc Ah]
Mintal703: folds
Pig's Eye 1: folds
moverdave: folds
TrapoLeproso: raises 299 to 499
Hepburn1: folds
GeorgeGunner: folds
justyxas: calls 399
FezioJnr: raises 1301 to 1800
TrapoLeproso: folds
justyxas: calls 1301
*** FLOP *** [7s 6c Ks]
justyxas: bets 10433 and is all-in
FezioJnr: calls 7461 and is all-in
Uncalled bet (2972) returned to justyxas
*** TURN *** [7s 6c Ks] [3h]
*** RIVER *** [7s 6c Ks 3h] [9d]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
justyxas: shows [3s Kh] (two pair, Kings and Threes)
FezioJnr: shows [Kc Ah] (a pair of Kings)
justyxas collected 19341 from pot
FezioJnr finished the tournament in 137th place
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 19341 | Rake 0
Board [7s 6c Ks 3h 9d]
Seat 2: justyxas (small blind) showed [3s Kh] and won (19341) with two pair, Kings and Threes
Seat 4: FezioJnr (big blind) showed [Kc Ah] and lost with a pair of Kings

AA less than KK greater than KQ aipf

I found myself allin preflop holding AA in the dream position, up against KK and KQ, only one out could cripple me...

PokerStars Game #51058532508: Tournament #318996170, €25+€2 EUR Hold'em No Limit - Level X (400/800) - 2010/10/14 0:14:40 WET [2010/10/13 19:14:40 ET]
Table '318996170 1' 9-max Seat #8 is the button
Seat 2: isidrink666 (23126 in chips)
Seat 3: patinho77 (3045 in chips)
Seat 4: NegPL (16858 in chips)
Seat 6: pennyyy (21392 in chips)
Seat 7: FezioJnr (30204 in chips)
Seat 8: Mihai Nutt (23506 in chips)
Seat 9: Tonys111 (8369 in chips)
Tonys111: posts small blind 400
isidrink666: posts big blind 800
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to FezioJnr [Ah Ac]
patinho77: raises 2170 to 2970 and is all-in
FezioJnr: calls 2970
Tonys111: raises 5324 to 8294 and is all-in
FezioJnr: calls 5324
*** FLOP *** [6s 3d Kc]
*** TURN *** [6s 3d Kc] [4d]
*** RIVER *** [6s 3d Kc 4d] [8c]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Tonys111: shows [Kh Ks] (three of a kind, Kings)
FezioJnr: shows [Ah Ac] (a pair of Aces)
Tonys111 collected 10648 from side pot
patinho77: shows [Qd Kd] (a pair of Kings)
Tonys111 collected 10235 from main pot
patinho77 finished the tournament in 7th place
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 20883 Main pot 10235. Side pot 10648. | Rake 0
Board [6s 3d Kc 4d 8c]
Seat 3: patinho77 showed [Qd Kd] and lost with a pair of Kings
Seat 7: FezioJnr showed [Ah Ac] and lost with a pair of Aces
Seat 9: Tonys111 (small blind) showed [Kh Ks] and won (20883) with three of a kind, Kings

I managed to bounce back from this hit and ship the €25r to take down a €500 seat...

1/211 for $2,447 (Daily $44 4-Max)

Shipped the Daily $44 4-Max Event on Poker Stars

Well after my post just two days ago in which I spouted

“Online has been mediocre to say the least over the past few months. I haven't made a final in a while and when you grind MTTs that does hurt.”

I proceeded to take down my first online tournament since the $1.2k I picked up in July for winning the $22 Big Antes.

After I made that post I again had a deep run (that evening) in the $22 Big Antes, however I got caught up in a high variance spot and busted 13^th out of 360 for $100. The following day I was two tabling between the $27.50 Big Antes and the $44 4-Max both on Stars. I made deep runs in both however busted the $27.50 in 36^th place out of 361 runners for $60, this was a disappointing result as I was maintaining a sub average stack the whole tournament. Whenever I’d build a stack I’d lose a standard race JJ less than A K, A K less than TT and QQ less than A K.

Once I busted I was fully focused on one table, which was the $44 4-Max. These tournaments in particular need to played with extra due care and attention due to the speed and amount of hands played. Your constantly involved in pots, 3-betting, 4-betting and even 5-betting a few times an orbit. So it was fortunate I busted the $27.50 tourney so I could concentrate 100%.

I registered 30mins late for this event which is what I have started to do a lot recently. Stars keep late registration open for an hour for every MTT now and usually 5%-10% of the field busts in quick succession so I like avoiding the meaningless 10/20, 15/30 levels and jumping right in at 25/50 with a 3k starting stack.

I immediately jumped into the top 10% of chips and remaining there until the money, keeping really busy and creating a nice aggressive table image. Once the money bubble burst my stack started to grow significantly, I ran very well for about an hour and found myself with 150k in chips. My aggro table image did help, because I was involved in so many pots that when I did hit I got action. For example I’d raise with K8 and the flop would come down 88T, if it was checked to me I’d put in a strong c-bet and if my opponent had any hand I got paid off with 3 streets of value. The beauty of these shorthanded events is you can find value with 2^nd and even 3^rd pair as people just don’t believe you and sometimes they’ll eve pay you off with A high.

I took the chip lead into the final table and was involved in a number of interesting hands, some of which I played well and some badly. I don’t have the HH’s to hand some pots which I thought were interesting were the following...

Full House.

4 handed final table, seated to the left of a serial raiser which was perfect as my 3 bets were getting though and I was winning a decent number of pots from the sb and bb when he raised from the button. I’m in the sb with 9T and its folded to him on the button, I’m playing about 170k and hes playing 120k blinds are 1500/3000. He makes it 7500 and I call. Flop 992, I thought about betting and it may have been the better option but I decided to check as I knew he would be betting 100%, he did and I called. Turn was a T giving me a boat and again I knew he’d bet so I check called a 25k bet on the turn. Now I’m sitting there with pretty much the nuts, how do I get his last 60k??? I know the chances are he has nothing, so in order to get that last 60k in the middle I can either put out a tiny river bet and hope he shoves or check and again hope he shoves. I decided that betting was a no go the hand went check call, check call, and a bet was obvious so I checked and hoped he’d shove, unfortunately for me he gave up and checked behind with nothing, not really sure how I could have played that hand differently to get more value, I know he had nothing but he was a serial aggressor so I’m sure I could have gotten his chips in the middle somehow.

A-Rag (this hand was before the one above)

2^nd hand was from the same position, I’m in the sb with A2o and the same guy on the button raises (I’m playing about 120k and hes playing about 150k) to 6k (blinds 1/2k). I call and the flop comes A high. I check and he bets out 15k into about 15k I min-raise to 30k as I’m 90% sure I have the best hand, to my surprise he then 3-bets to 65k. Now I start to think, do I want to risk my tournament life with A2 and bust out first in the final table. It’s a fold or allin situation. Based on his aggressive style and the fact I’d been raising and 3-bet him a lot, his play started to look like strange. He may well be doing that with a small pocket pair and figured I’d fold without the Ace. I went with my read and decided to shove my A2 allin leaving him another 50k or so to call, he instantly folded and this play gave me plenty of confidence and added to my super aggressive table image. If only you could show one card on Stars, I would have loved to have just shown a deuce.

I took out the aggressive player in 4^th after he shoved his 88 into my 99. I then had about 400k of the 600k in play and just shoved any pair, ace and king to try and accumulate as many chips as possible before heads up as both guys tightened up loads due to the $1k pay jump. Once heads up I had a 5-1 chip lead, picked up AQ, shoved he called with KJ and I held. GG.

Play finished in the early hours and didn’t get to bed until 3.30am, up at 7am for work :D I was getting slightly annoyed that it was getting late at the final table and once I did spew chips on a final table just because I thought “fek it, if I bust I can get some sleep”. But this time I focused and was determined to win even if it meant no sleep before work.

Thanks.

Live/Online Update

As this is my first post in a while I'll break it down into small sections...

Live.

I played the £220 Deepstack event in Bristol last month, I busted late in day 1 and it was a fairly uneventful tourney for me. The structure was ok with a 10k starting stack on an hour clock and this event produced 100 runners which wasn't bad at all for a local tourney. Myself, Dann (s4ooter) and Shme all went down for the event with Shme busting first despite building a decent stack early on, Dann busted next after getting "s4ootered" (again) and finally I busted around mid-night shoving my shortstack into AT.

This was the only event I played over the past few months which wasn't the original plan, this was due to a number of reasons. One, the UKIPT is making a return for a 2nd season and therefore I want to try and keep some holidays (from work) to play some of these. I played 3 of the events last season and enjoyed everyone of them, so looking forward to trying to satellite into a few more. Secondly my overall volume has generally been a lot lower and haven't had the urge to play live events like I did a few months back. After the Bristol event I just figured unless the live event was a juicy event or festival then I cba to travel to it. It's pointless booking time off work and trekking to a venue for one event, wasting money on hotels, travel, food, etc... Plus my time is probably better spent online. With that said I'll be throwing lots of UKIPT satellites into my weekly schedule, furthermore the GUKPT satellites have been restructured so I may even try and play one of those events. Although I've been told there isn't much dead money in them anymore, it would still be interesting to play an event to get a feel for the competition.

Online.

Online has been mediocre to say the least over the past few months. I haven't made a final in a while and when you grind MTTs that does hurt. I made it deep in a 6-Max $44 MTT on Stars and stupidly spewed the chip lead with JJ on a 255 flop after flatting a raise preflop, the villain woke up with A5 lol.

I also min-cashed the Sunday Warmup again playing my A game. Just in the money I took a hit and ran three shoves through uncontested, then I wake up with QQ and shove for a fourth time and a big stack calls me with 99, flop...9 gg.

Apart from that some other cashes here and there, with that said my all time online MTT winnings has now surpassed $60k...


I also shipped a30e Double Shootout good fpr 530e. The beauty of this tourney was that only 17 players registered, meaning one lucky player got a freeroll to the 9-handed final table....fortunately that lucky player was me.

I built a stack early on and managed to get it allin with the other bigstack at the table and another medium stack with AA. I was in the big blind with AA, folded around to the button who makes it 450 (blinds 75/150). SB shoves 1.7k and I flat in the BB playing 5k, button shoves and I call. SB has QT, me AA and button QQ, I hold and have over half the chips in play with 4 left...