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Played the EPT Baden satellite today with the W$ I cashed in from not playing the Dublin satellite last weekend. Very tough game. I raised once and folded to a reraise and after that they were all over me – two players in particular, both Scandinavian if you think that’s relevant…. Couldn’t get any respect and couldn’t pick up any pots uncontested, and never saw a hand to do any real damage.
Whittled away I end up losing a race in the most frustrating way. Can you believe the board didn’t pair?
Preflop: Hero is BB with Js, Jd.
6 folds, SB raises to t300, Hero raises to t1445 and is all-in, SB calls t1145.
Flop: (t2890) Jc, Kc, Ts (2 players)
Turn: (t2890) 5s (2 players)
River: (t2890) Ac (2 players)
Hero has Js Jd (three of a kind, jacks).
SB has As Qs (straight, ace high).
So I’m not going to Switzerland and I’m also not going to Vegas. 4th in tonights Poker Dome qualifier on Mansion. Which was much softer by the way, but you’d expect that for $22 instead of $475. I had aces cracked early on, fought my way back, ran into quads with a full house, managed to not go broke and almost recovered before finally going out 4th with 2 getting seats. A good performance considering the beats, but not enough to put me on the road to anywhere.
I am sitting in the Virgin Trains 1st Class lounge at Euston station, playing on PokerStars.
Free coffee, free biscuits and a 20% deposit bonus.
Does it get any better than this?
I often worry when I’m multi-tabling and all of a sudden there’s a rush of hands that I want to stop and take a minute to think about whether I played them right. You can be folding away for ages then suddenly three big hands come along at once, just like these. Long entry, bear with me.
Hand 1:
PokerRoom 2/4 Hold’em (10 handed) Hand History Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com (Format: HTML)
Preflop: Hero is MP3 with Jh, Js.
1 fold, UTG+1 calls, 2 folds, MP2 calls, Hero raises, 3 folds, BB calls, UTG+1 calls, MP2 calls.
Flop: (8.50 SB) 3h, 6s, 5c (4 players)
BB bets, UTG+1 calls, MP2 raises, Hero 3-bets, BB folds, UTG+1 calls, MP2 calls.
Turn: (9.25 BB) Qh (3 players)
UTG+1 checks, MP2 checks, Hero bets, UTG+1 calls, MP2 folds.
River: (11.25 BB) 2h (2 players)
UTG+1 checks, Hero checks.
Results:
UTG+1 has 8d 9d (high card, queen).
Hero has Jh Js (one pair, jacks).
Outcome: Hero wins 11.25 BB.
So should I put in one more bet on the river here? Clearly it’s not going to get called by the busted gutshot draw but should I be betting here for value? The 2h completes just about every sensible draw going and UTG+1 has not shown any aggression at any point, he’s just calling along looking like he needs another card to be happy. Plus, I still only have one pair, smaller than the highest card on board. It’s hard to figure a Q is out there, but you never know. I didn’t see any value betting here, but I could only think about it for a split second whilst other tables were flashing at me. I still think I like the check.
Hand 2:
PokerRoom 2/4 Hold’em (10 handed) Hand History Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com (Format: HTML)
Preflop: Hero is UTG+1 with 4h, Ah. CO posts a blind of $2.
1 fold, Hero calls, UTG+2 calls, 1 fold, MP2 calls, 1 fold, CO (poster) checks, 1 fold, SB completes, BB checks.
Flop: (6 SB) 2h, 8h, Ts (6 players)
SB checks, BB bets, Hero calls, UTG+2 calls, MP2 calls, CO folds, SB calls.
Turn: (5.50 BB) 9d (5 players)
SB checks, BB bets, Hero calls, UTG+2 calls, MP2 raises, SB 3-bets, BB folds, Hero calls, UTG+2 folds, MP2 caps, SB calls, Hero calls.
River: (19.50 BB) 6s (3 players)
SB bets, Hero folds, MP2 raises, SB 3-bets, MP2 caps, SB calls.
Results:
SB has Jh Qc (straight, queen high).
MP2 has Js Qs (straight, queen high).
Outcome: MP2 wins 13.75 BB. SB wins 13.75 BB.
All is good until the turn. I decide to call the flop rather than raise with 5 players in, hoping to make my draw and then get paid off by at least one player. My first turn call gives me 6.5-1 on a 4.5-1 flush draw. In all honesty I couldn’t think fast enough to work out whether the second call was good, so I hoped it would be profitable with implied odds, if not immediately. I was calling 2 big bets to win 13.5 – plenty for my draw still. If it’s capped behind me (which it was, and which I should expect to happen quite often in this spot) it becomes 3BB to win 17.5. OK that still sounds good. All in all on the turn I paid 4 BBs for a shot at a 19.5 BB pot, which was just enough to make the flush draw profitable. The call was OK, I just didn’t know it at the time!
Hand 3:
PokerRoom 2/4 Hold’em (10 handed) Hand History Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com (Format: HTML)
Preflop: Hero is BB with Jh, 3d.
8 folds, SB completes, Hero checks.
Flop: (2 SB) 2c, Qs, Js (2 players)
SB bets, BB raises, SB calls.
Turn: (3 BB) 9d (2 players)
SB checks, BB bets, SB calls.
River: (5 BB) 2d (2 players)
SB checks, Hero checks.
Results:
SB has Qc Ts (two pair, queens and twos).
Hero has Jh 3d (two pair, jacks and twos).
Outcome: SB wins 5 BB.
I don’t really know what to make of this because my blind play sucks. Right now I think I played it OK, it’s just one of those horrible SB vs BB situations where it looks like you probably got lucky but didn’t. I could check the turn but the signs are that I’m probably good so betting is best. Then after he calls the flop raise and turn bet, I figure a river bet will only be called by a hand that beats me, and I probably can’t get a better hand to fold. If only they let you chop the blinds…
Interesting (for me, anyway) to see how playing a 1000 hand bonus on Party Poker compares at $1/$2 to my last bonus which I played on $25NL.
Hands played: 1482 (for 1000 raked hands)
Hours played: 20.7 (approx 10 hours, playing 2 or 3 tables)
Rake paid: $57.50
Amount won: $59.81 (2.02 BB per 100 hands)
Win rate: $5.98/hr
Bonus awarded: $100
Rate w/ bonus: $15.98/hr
I only played 2 or 3 tables at a time for this bonus, as I was doing other things whilst I cleared the bonus – mostly just working through a huge backlog of emails that had built up whilst I was away. So my hourly rate is down, but the overall win rate is not bad for this level. Given that I got creamed at $1/$2 on Party the last time I tried to do a whole bonus, I’m pretty pleased.
I paid almost twice as much rake as last time, but won more overall and Party still lost over $40 on this bonus!
Here’s the rest, stat lovers:
Vol. Put $ In Pot: 15.52%
Pre-flop Raise: 8.77%
Post-flop Aggression: 3.69
Won $ When Saw Flop: 38.63%
Went to Showdown: 26.35%
Won $ At Showdown: 63.01%
Folded SB to Steal: 100.00%
Folded BB to Steal: 44.44%
Attempt to Steal Blinds: 32.38%
I need to look into the significance of some of these again. I’m very happy with my aggression (grrrr), but from what I recall winning 63% of showdowns is a little too high and could indicate that I’m folding too often to a river bet. Might be defending too many big blinds too. Gotta love them stats…
Early bath for me in the EPT satellite – there were 240 players, making 12 seats and 2 cash prizes. I got shafted with AK against AJ, all in preflop. My table was playing very tight and the blinds were starting to matter much more than they should with 150 players remaining so I was happy to find a spot where I was fairly confident of being at least 50/50 to double up. I didn’t make it, then never recovered with my remaining stack.
I have never been to Barcelona. I’m told it’s very pretty, and the dogs do have noses. Quite how much of the city I’d actually get to see is debateable, but I have been trying two separate routes to get there. If either is successful you can be sure you will hear about it!
First, jumped into an EPT qualifier on PokerStars, for $36+$3 and entry into the main satellite for every $475 up for grabs this felt similar to the $36 qualifiers for the Sunday Million, but about twice as hard. I wasn’t disappointed though, staying lucky when it mattered most and soaring into the final five to win a seat.
WPT, WSOP and EPT satellites on Stars can be cashed in for W$ rather than T$, so I know I’m not going to blow this on smaller tournaments as I might do with a T$215 seat. However you can spend W$ on WCOOP events, so I might bottle out of this and put it towards the $530 No Limit event in a couple of weeks time instead. I was thinking I’d play the satellite if there were more than two seats to win, and right now there’s nearly enough for three so I probably will do that on Saturday.
The other tournament I want to get into is the Ongame Poker Classic. A few weeks ago I won a $50 ticket on PokerRoom and planned to use it to get into the Stage 2 Qualifier but it wouldn’t let me register. Their reason for this, they told me, is that you can either win a ticket to the qualifier or buy one. Which still doesn’t really explain why I can’t use a ticket for the exact value for that tournament, but I’m going to have to find another way to get through this one, as it’s fast approaching.
As my $50 ticket was about to expire – just like all money does – I decided to play a satellite for the Sunday Big Deal $300+$20. This has a guaranteed prize pool of $80,000 so you’d expect about 300-400 players – not too intimidating compared to the other sites big sunday events with 3000+ entries. Never been in it before – but I am now! This satellite also went unnaturally well and I picked up a seat by finishing in the top 2 of 18 players. This is the stuff television poker dreams are made of – I’ve parlayed $7 into $50, and now into $320. Next stop could be tens of thousands!
Oh, and I hit a royal flush too. I was so not expecting it that I didn’t manage to scramble to the print screen key in time, but here’s the hand history:
$50+$4 (real money), hand #933,398,217
Qualifier to Big Deal Multi Table Tournament, 1 Sep 2006 12:13 AM
Seat 1: Hallertauer ($5,440 in chips)
Seat 3: dosc74 ($6,420 in chips)
Seat 7: lucky_donut [QC,JC] ($4,960 in chips)
Seat 8: walkyre ($5,060 in chips)
Seat 10: bretbret ($5,120 in chips)
ANTES/BLINDS
bretbret posts blind ($100), Hallertauer posts blind ($200).
PRE-FLOP
dosc74 folds, lucky_donut bets $500, walkyre folds, bretbret calls $400, Hallertauer folds.
FLOP [board cards AC,10C,9H ]
bretbret checks, lucky_donut bets $600, bretbret bets $2,000, lucky_donut bets $3,860 and is all-in, bretbret calls $2,460.
TURN [board cards AC,10C,9H,4H ]
RIVER [board cards AC,10C,9H,4H,KC ]
SHOWDOWN
lucky_donut shows [ QC,JC ]
bretbret shows [ JS,AD ]
lucky_donut wins $10,120.
I had 15 outs (9 flush, 6 straight), so was a favourite against almost any hand with two cards to come. Nice as it is to see a royal flush, any king or any club would have done!
And it’s over. I guess we were about 560th in the end.
It all went very choppy. The table broke and before I could open up the new one I’d raised to 2400 under the gun with AQ. One player calls and the flop brings 245.
We apparently bet 3200 out of position here, leaving us with 5800 but the other player has a bit less. He moves all in for 7400.
[01:44] Fake Me: committed
Well, yeah. Easy for me to criticise when I’m somehow completely detached from the hand I know. This is one of those bets where you look like a genius when he holds AK and can lay it down, but otherwise gets you into a world of trouble. It’s a check-fold, or a move all in – there’s no half measures with these stacks. I’d often push here if there’s something to represent but on this super low board, any pocket pair is going to play, so you won’t get any worse hands to call so you’re only doing yourself a favour against AK or another AQ.
[01:44] Fake Me: arse
[01:44] Fake Me: F**K
We didn’t get any help and we’re down to 1600 with the big blind coming right now. Any two will do now with 900 already in the pot in blinds and antes, and 33 looks sweet. It’s very sweet in fact when a 3 comes on the flop and we just about stay alive.
Next hand JJ vs KQ and we double up.
Next hand TT vs KK and it’s time for bed.
[01:48] Fake Me: bollocks
[01:48] Fake Me: sorry
Hey, it’s a hell of a lot better than having me blind away because I can’t make the start. At least we had a shot…
Anyway, I’d already noticed that a lot of the Full Tilt pros were playing this, and looking at the top stacks now I can still see John Juana, Erick Lindgren and Kristy Gazes vying for a seat. We finished above Phil Gordon, by the way, for what it’s worth. It does seem a bit tight though that these players – who undoubtedly are getting their Main Event entry paid by Full Tilt – are playing this satellite. One would expect the Team Full Tilt field to have a decent success rate in these satellites (it will be interesting to see how many of them make it), and certainly you would expect better than 1-in-24 to make the top 127.
So if Full Tilt are paying their entry to the satellite, isn’t this just a stealth rake? And if they’re not, why are these guys playing it at all?
The strangest thing about having someone play for you is that I’m really not sweating it that badly at all. We’re getting in bad shape, picking up just the blinds with AA and somehow I’m not relating what’s happening on screen at all to my shot at a $10k seat and ultimately $10m and all that fame and (more) fortune malarky.
Even when this happens, I just find it … well… slightly amusing.
[01:30] Fake Me: well 5 hands to push or not
[01:30] Fake Me: all in next hand
[01:31] Fake Me: ok not this time
[01:32] Fake Me X: KJ o
[01:32] Real Me: nooooooooo
He duly moves all in, from early middle position
Fortunately the big stack big blind folded, and we’re still alive.
And try as I might to stay out of it, I can’t. But whether I’d follow my own advice here I don’t know…
[01:37] Fake Me: ok this level is going to kill us
[01:37] Fake Me: looks very dodgy now mate
[01:37] Real Me: push any 2 if folded
[01:37] Fake Me: here we go
He does as I suggest
[01:38] Real Me: gl
[01:38] Real Me: what ya got?
[01:38] Fake Me: KQ
We are called by AJ, but the flop brings a Q and we survive
[01:38] Real Me: f**k yeah
[01:38] Fake Me: rockin
An average stack is within sniffing distance once more…
So Full Tilt’s fear that they’d be out of pocked on the guaranted tournament was – as expected – a load of nonsense. There were 3,050 entrants making 127 seats to be awarded! They’re making a cool $106,750 in entry fees from this tournament alone.
I also just checked at PokerStars who were having a 150 guaranteed seat satellite today – with 7,377 players they are awarding 234 seats! Blimey, that’ll go on until the wee hours and then some…. The self proclaimed largest satellite in the world ever, and it’s very hard to argue. I didn’t even realise their software could cope with such a big field – usually it’s capped at 3600 or some such number.
I got back a bit earlier than I thought I would and I’ve already seen myself rollercoaster.
[00:13] Real Me: how are we doing?
[00:14] Fake Me: 5500
[00:14] Fake Me: make that 9200
[00:14] Fake Me: AA just held up
[00:19] Fake Me: in 50th place
[00:24] Fake Me: 11595 chips
At that point we were in 37th place and I’d finally got settled, microwaved myself a chicken burger (surprisingly good, and ready in just 55 seconds) and pulled up the table on screen to watch.
Then it all went a little pear shaped. The first hand I saw with AQs turned into the nut flush draw vs two overpairs (88 and JJ on a 7-high board) and we got no love from the poker gods. I decided to stop watching for a while – clearly it’s bad luck to observe yourself from afar, with likely side effects ranging from mild itching to a variety of natural disasters.
But by the time I was brave enough to peak again we were back down to just over 5000, and the average had overtaken us. It’s now the second break, and after a steal with 66 (so I’m told) we have 5,785 with 250/500 blinds and a 50 ante. 1090 players remain and the average stack is 8394.
So I’d already qualified for tonights Full Tilt 100 WSOP Seat guaranteed satellite, but after I realised I wouldn’t actually be able to play it from the start I’ve had to make a deal with someone else to play it for me. I can’t really say who this is, as he’s apparently had to arrange to “work from home” tomorrow in case it goes on late (I figured it’d run to about 5am if all goes to plan).
The prize package is a $10,000 WSOP Main Event Seat with $2,000 for expenses paid in cash. I had tried everything to get Full Tilt to deregister me from the tournament – I’d asked if I could transfer the seat, take it’s value in satellite tokens to play other tournies on their site, even if they’d give me the $535 seat value to buy into a WSOP event for which of course I’d agree to wear their gear (which is pretty hideous) whilst I played. They gave me the runaround for almost 2 weeks, sounding like something was going to happen but eventually the Promotions Manager said no.
Their excuse: this is a guaranteed seat tournament so you must play it. They were afraid that there would not be enough entrants to cover the 100 Main Event seat prizes. Like that would ever happen. I was more pissed off that they kept me hoping for so long without a straight answer, than the fact that they wouldn’t actually bend the rules for me. I mean, how long does it take to say “rules is rules”?
Anyway, so to get my glamourous assistant to play the tourney for me, I had to give up the $2k additional prize money – not an awful deal for either of us really, as I’m already in Vegas if I get the seat and the chance to $2k cash for 6-8 hours playing at no risk isn’t bad. I’m just hoping its enough incentive for him to not actually play this like a freeroll!
The fun starts at 11pm, and I’ll be back probably sometime between midnight and 1am.
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