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I’ll try not to turn this into a bad beat whinge. I got beat, but it wasn’t particularly bad. I just want to write the hand down to help me think about how I played it.
Party Poker No-Limit Hold’em, $ BB (10 handed) Hand History Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com (Format: HTML)
Hero ($20)
BB ($24.75)
UTG ($26.05)
UTG+1 ($37.55)
UTG+2 ($13.65)
MP1 ($36.54)
MP2 ($6.20)
MP3 ($24.15)
CO ($31.85)
Button ($27.24)
Preflop: Hero is SB with Tc, 7h. Hero posts a blind of $0.10.
3 folds, MP1 calls $0.25, 1 fold, MP3 calls $0.25, CO calls $0.25, 1 fold, Hero completes, BB checks.
So this call is a bit loose with a poor hand and no position. However this game was playing pretty weak-tight and I’d been able to take down a lot of four- or five-way pots with a single flop bet when the board came low or paired. I was in a seeing-the-flop kind of mood, and this was probably about the worst hand I’d be completing the small blind with.
Flop: ($1.25) 9s, 8c, 6d (5 players)
Hero checks
Mmmm looks good. Let’s make sure. My staight is the nuts. and the board is a rainbow. All good. I don’t need to show any strength here, with a low board I might not get any action anyway so let’s either allow someone else to take a stab or if nobody wants to bet then someone might catch a decent second-best hand on the turn.
BB checks, MP1 checks, MP3 bets $0.75, CO calls $0.75, Hero calls $0.75
OK, two people with chips to give me and two still to act. I like to call here. Make me look weak, nobody will really pay attention and encourage the other two to join in with the calling and the donating 🙂
BB calls $0.75, MP1 raises to $1.5, MP3 calls $0.75, CO calls $0.75, Hero calls $0.75, BB calls $0.75.
Now it gets interesting. A minimum raise as a check-raise from MP1 – what the hell does that mean? Does he have a huge hand? Or is he trying to build a pot with a big draw? The hand I’ve not considered so far – and at the time didn’t consider until it was to late – was the mighty TJ. This hand has a decent draw, and pumping the pot vs 4 opponents is profitable as long as nobody comes over the top. Would he do this, though, and risk a reraise from MP3 which might price out his draw completely?
There’s a wide range of hands for the min-raiser, most likely a set that thinks it’s the best or possibly a limped overpair that wants to know if it’s good. Right now there’s no hand that I’m behind. It is this bet that I just don’t know whether to call or raise. On the one hand, I want to keep everyone around when I have the nuts, but I want to make sure I know that I either still have the best hand after the next card, or that it moves me back to second place so I can get out.
Like I said, I hadn’t really considered JT as a threat. I’d decided that I’d slow down to a pair on board, although this is silly. If I figure someone for a set, let’s raise it up now because they’re never folding it. But what do I do when a Q or 7 falls… I needed to know, and didn’t.
So guess what…
Turn: ($8.75) Qc (5 players)
Hero checks, BB checks, MP1 checks, MP3 checks, CO bets $4, Hero raises $14.25 (all in) BB folds, MP1 folds, MP3 folds, CO calls $14.25.
So is my hand good? Maybe… Can I lay it down? Almost certainly not. So I think I have to push now. Against the made straight with JT I’m toast. Against a set I’m still in pretty good shape. If I just call, again I’m possibly giving an inferior hand a chance to catch up before making a difficult decision, and a quarter of the deck will pair the board to give me that decision. The pot’s big enough that I’m probably going to have to call even if it pairs, unless I can convince myself there’s really nothing I’m beating.
Then again, that $4 bet doesn’t really show any great strength. CO has limped along the whole way so far, now everyone checks to him and he bets in position on the first high card to hit the board. Maybe he just has a Q and suddenly likes the look of it, or maybe Qx two pair.
I panic-push, and this isn’t a great situation to be in or a great move to be making. The one hand that has me crushed is a distinct possibility, and I’m throwing money away to that hand, whilst if the bettor only has top pair he might well get away from it. I can’t really see many better alternatives right now though.
River: ($27) 9d (2 players)
Final Pot: $27
Main Pot: $27, between Hero and CO.
Results:
Hero has Tc 7h (straight, ten high).
CO has 6h 6s (full house, sixes full of nines).
Outcome: CO wins $27.
So I got lucky, and was against a set. Then I got unlucky and he boated to beat me.
What did I do wrong? I think I got too greedy early on. The first flop call was probably best, as long as I was prepared to react to a possible better straight getting there as well as a full house. But after the min raise, and another call I guess it’s time to start asking for information, even if I do have the current nuts. I needed to bet big enough to make a straight draw make a mistake and force any made hand to decide whether they are good.
Given a second chance, I sandbag the flop and reraise to $8. I get it all in against CO and still lose. In fact this way I’m giving him twice as much pot equity by putting my money in earlier, but I just don’t think I’m good enough to play the hand any slower and confidently make the right decision.
So much for my quest. First day went OK, but not great, with me winning a seat to a $50+$4 satellite on PokerRoom, which it turns out is good for any $50+$4 event apart from the one I wanted to play in. Looks like entry to the Stage 2 Poker Classic is via the Stage 1 tournament only. Bit stupid really, and a pisser for me because now I have to find a decent $50+$4 to play on there.
In any case, through some combniation of not having a clock in the living room and getting caught up in the previous night’s Big Brother on Sky+ over tea, I’d managed to miss the 7pm Stage 2 tournament three nights running. Played just one more UltimateBet satellite since my enthusiastic qualification mission began, and subsequently turned into a damp squib. Just too much to do before Vegas (T-14 now!) so it was totally the wrong time to try something like this.
So that UB tournament was a $10+$1 rebuy/addon into a $215 Aruba qualifier and has the dubious honour of having the most blatently rigged final hand in the history of online poker. The screenshot pretty much says it all. Click the thumbnail to see the full horror…
Three handed and short-stacked, I move all-in for about 7 times the big blind with a pocket pair. It’s usually ahead here. The small blind calls with his pocket pair. He figures to usually be ahead. Big blind goes mental with the third pair and we’re in a three-way all-in situation 77 vs 88 vs 99. Needless to say the winning hand was belonged to the chip leader so it didn’t matter that he was way behind pre-flop. It was all over 3 seconds later.
I made some notes along the way in this satellite also – see, I started off on the right foot with the quest! But right now I think leave it at that.
To be continued… sometime, hopefully fairly soon. Maybe.
I have decided to make it my mission this week to qualify for a big event through an online satellite. Why, I’m not really sure with Vegas just round the corner (T-18!). But I’ve not had much time to play poker lately and I decided that if I was make time to play this week then I’d do it with a mission.
I’m still not going to be able to throw myself at this, with hundreds of other real world things to get done before we go away, but any poker I play will be focused on The Mission. I’m going to try to (gasp) single-table these games too, something I haven’t done for quite a while. Occasionally two quallies I want to play will overlap so I might make an exception, other than that I’ll have to see just how good my patience is!
I have identified four possible satellites that I want to get into as cheaply as possible:
OnGame Poker Classic:
Stage 1: $6+1
Stage 2: $50+$4
Stage 3: $300+20
Final: $5000+$200 on Sept 2nd played online down to 45 players
Final 45 play live in Barcelona Sept 28th-Oct 1st
Aruba Ultimate Poker Classic:
Sub-qualifiers to satellites costing $200 or $1000
Event is Sept 23rd – Oct 1st
$10,000 package includes $5,200 entry plus travel and accomodation
Camp Hellmuth:
Satellites are $109, package worth $3000
Event takes place in Vegas Aug 11-13
Camp value $2000 + $1500 expenses paid
Ultimate Bet WSOP $3k Satellite:
$30+$3 rebuys or $50+$5 freezeout.
Prize is $2000 in WSOP entries + $1000 cash.
I’d use this for a main event satellite and another preliminary event.
I’ve so far played four qualifiers, and so far managed to keep to one table at a time without getting itchy fingers!
PokerRoom $6+$1 Poker Classic Stage 1. I began at lunchtime with the 12:10 qualifier and it was short and sweet, but thanks to a masterpiece of misplanning this early in my quest I’d already put some bacon in the George Foreman grill before I realised it was about to start and would have been distracted by food shortly afterwards anyway. 8 minutes in and I was busted with QQ, moving in on the flop with my overpair vs two flush draws which both hit on the turn. I was pleased to see I was ahead but didn’t really like the move as my all-in came after I got raised and called by the other two players. The bacon factor, along with seeing that there was only one seat and one cash place in this satellite with 24 players almost certainly influenced my decision.
$11 feeder to Camp Hellmuth satellite. I survived 59 minutes before busting out in 6th place – hey at least I didn’t have to sit through the break with hardly any chips left… There were only 9 entrants in this giving us a small overlay on the seat value, but meaning that it was first place or nothing. With a minimum raise to 120 under-the-gun and one caller I reraise to 340 with 44. If the min-raiser actually has a hand and comes to life I can get away from this with 865 chips remaining. The raiser folds, but the weak caller wants to see a flop and I feel I have to move in on the flop when he checks to me as long as the board doesn’t look too scary. He instacalls with JT on a J62 rainbow board (couldn’t ask for much better without a 4!) and I’m done.
$20+$2 satellite to $109 Tournament. As UB now offer tournament dollars, even though this was not a Hellmuth satellite I would be able to use the seat value to play in the event I wanted. This seemed like good value, with one seat for every five and a half players (I have had decent success in a similar structure on PokerStars) however it was a turbo tournament with 5 minute levels. In total there were 38 players for 6 seats and $106 cash, but I went dry when it mattered and got called by a rag ace when I needed to steal some blinds. I went to the rail in 16th place.
PokerRoom $7+$1 Satellite to $50+$4. This seemed to be a bit better value than the Stage 1 qualifier, with the same value ticket prize. Finally, things go right and I land a ticket for just over 2 hours work. I have more detailled notes about this one, and depending on whether it sounds vaguely interesting when I read it back I might post some hands later. However when I went to register for the Stage 2 tournament, it wouldn’t let me use this ticket! My next mission is to find out why…
Summary:
Played: 4
Cost: $48
Won: $54
Not exactly impressive yet. About even 🙂
Continue reading Questing (Part 1)
I usually ignore table talk, but occasionally there’s the odd comment that jumps out. I strangely liked this one. He’d been beat good and even though PokerRoom doesn’t have a profanity filter, it’d slip through on any poker site.
Succinct, offensive and with capital letters in all the right places. A trash talk gem.
PokerRoom 2/4 Hold’em (8 handed)
Hand History Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com (Format: HTML)
Preflop: is SB with As, Qh.
3 folds, MP2 calls, 2 folds, lucky_donut raises, 1 fold, MP2 calls.
Flop: (4.50 SB) Kc, Kd, 4d (2 players)
lucky_donut bets, MP2 calls.
Turn: (3.25 BB) Td (2 players)
lucky_donut checks, MP2 folds.
Final Pot: 3.25 BB
Main Pot: 3.25 BB, returned to SB.
Results:
No showdown. SB wins 3.25 BB.
Well I certainly can’t complain. I just don’t understand what hand he could have had here though to fold like that, on the turn and in position to take a free card. If it’s worth $2 to call the flop, it’s worth $0 to see one last card, surely? This wasn’t a disconnect either, it was a pretty quick fold but he was around next hand and not sitting out.
I was in check-fold mode here, perhaps a little weak but thinking that there’s not much I’m beating that can could call the flop bet – you have to expect a pair or better or a flush draw, which just hit. Best case is AJ or A9, which is pretty unlikely. For the size of the pot, I’m not going to throw chips away trying to take this one by force a second time. I can’t call any bet with one overcard and a gutshot draw, none of which are clean outs.
I can’t see a small pocket pair folding here to no bet – nothing to be embarassed about, and it feels like he was drawing to something, missed and then decided he didn’t want to show. Occasionally you see this, however daft it is, just so players don’t have to reveal their cards but it’s always on the river – this was a card too early. It would have to be two cards lower than a K, which is a muppet call on the flop, but not QJ (which now has a straight draw), QT or JT (which now has a pair) – so what, Q9 or J9 calling a flop bet here and hoping to catch something?
I don’t get it, but tyvm anyway 🙂
Hardly played any poker this week, but somehow managed to remember to register for all three of the PokerStars freerolls I was eligible for today – as I made GoldStar status last month during their double VIP points promotion I got to play the $5000 SilverStar Weekly, $7500 GoldStar Weekly and $100,000 VIP Monthly freerolls.
Two scores out of three aint bad. A whopping $18.50 for the GoldStar (27th from 1138) and $100 from the VIP (218th from 2861). The VIP freeroll, was one of the main reasons I went for GoldStar (amid, I’m afraid, several recitals of the Going For Gold theme whilst I was grinding it out). I’m 3 for 3 money finishes in this now in the month’s where I’ve been able to play it, and it helps to make up for the fact I dont do very well in fixed limit on Stars still.
The other incentive for me to get back up to a VIP level was because I have lots of Frequent Player Points to spend and many of the items in their store are available to VIPs only. So now I have just 6 days left as a GoldStar player and it’s unlikely I’ll even retain SilverStar into next month I need to make some decisions.
Originally I was planning to cash in 15000 FPPs (most of my balance) for one of their single table tournaments with a world champion. These happen every week and entry is equivalent to $225 – you can’t buy in for money though, and can only redeem FPPs if you are GoldStar or higher. This seemed like a decent option, as four out of ten places are paid something and there’s a $250 bounty for eliminating the champ. I’ve changed my mind on this though, after I realised that they’re usually filled with the same players every week who I would expect to be very strong sit-and-go players and who would probably not be sweating a $1000 payoff like I would. As I can only afford one shot at this, I’ll pass for now.
So what’s it to be? I can afford an iPod Nano, but cool as they are, I don’t really need one. My Creative Zen still does me fine, although it’s a bit of a brick in comparison to Apple’s beauties, and I really don’t fancy having to reload all my music back onto it, and actually face up to the fact that I have probably hundreds of hours of podcasts I still haven’t listened to…
So there’s the jacket that I had my eye on since I started playing at Stars. Pretty nice, but at 10000 FPPs, it’s costing about $150 in terms of what else I could be spending the points on. I’m not sure I like it that much, but have to decide quickly as it’s another VIP-only item. Amazon gift certificates are available now, but again you have to be SilverStar or above so I have to order them this week or wait and then get VIP status again. Such a dilemma!
For as much as I don’t like InterPoker (probably a separate rant) their monthly $100 deposit bonus is good and when you can clear this in conjunction with a second bonus it’s really too good to turn down.
The second promotion was a bonus payout each time you are dealt poket kings. After submitting your account number and the hand number, they promise to credit your account with $10. The only condition is that the hand must have generated some rake. In theory this is a great promo. $10 free every 220 hands on average is worth roughly 1 big bet per 100 hands at $2/$4. I played 676 hands last night (ended up clearing about half of the bonus) during the promo period and was dealt KK just once, yet I saw AA and QQ 4 times each, and JJ a whopping 9 times. A cynical player might say that all the KKs turned to JJ for the duration of this promo, and I did see others chatting about how they hadn’t seen KK the whole time. But this was an InterPoker promo only, so I can’t believe that even if it was possible the whole Cryptologic network would put on a crooked deal just for one skin! Of course, when they run this offer for just 5 hours at a time you’re not really getting a very big sample of hands, and those that are seeing a rush of Kings aren’t going to be complaining…
So, let’s just see how badly I messed up the one KK hand I did see: Remembering that the hand has to be raked to get the bonus, and with everyone folding to me leaving just two players and the blinds still to act, I decide to just limp in to make sure we get the flop and the hand is raked. Just the big blind stayed in for a free play, and of course flopped 2 pair with his Q5o to relieve me of $20.
Only myself to blame, though I still think limping here is probably right. With any other player already in the pot I’m raising, and from early position you don’t want to encourage limpers to play against your big pair. An open limp in middle to late position on a tight table gives up your the edge on a $2 bet preflop but locks in the extra $10 win-or-lose bonus. It’s just a question of whether the bonus compensates for letting in opponents with crud hands. In my case it didn’t, but I did only have one chance to find out.
I didn’t last very long, but I wasn’t really trying. Don’t see how they expect you to play it sensibly really when there’s over 2200 players registered but only about half actually turn up. I thought Stars had started to prevent such freeroll stupidity now by only allowing registration up to 1 hour before kick off but for this they registered everyone automatically just for showing interest. Four idle players at a table was not unusual.
In fairness, I shouldn’t have been allowed to play so I contributed to the farce. You can see that my blog has only been running about 3 weeks, when their entry requirement was 3 months of regular posts. But it turns out they didn’t actually impose any entry criteria at all, so it’s basically just a monster freeroll where you just have to make a little more effort to get a seat than clicking "register".
Nice to be on the receiving end of hands like this for a change. Twice today as well, with back-to-back big blinds having poor hands turn into winners…
PokerRoom $2/$4 Hold’em (9 handed)
Hand History Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com (Format: HTML)
Preflop: lucky_donut is BB with Jc, 9c.
1 fold, UTG+1 calls, 2 folds, MP3 calls, 1 fold, Button raises, SB calls, UTG+1 calls, MP3 calls.
Flop: (8 SB) Ks, 2h, 9s (5 players)
SB bets, lucky_donut calls, UTG+1 folds, MP3 calls, Button raises, SB calls, MP3 calls.
Turn: (7 BB) 9h (4 players)
SB bets, lucky_donut raises, MP3 folds, Button calls, SB calls.
River: (13 BB) 7c (3 players)
SB checks, lucky_donut bets, Button calls, SB calls.
Final Pot: 16 BB
Results:
SB has 8h Kh (two pair, kings and nines).
lucky_donut has Jc 9c (three of a kind, nines).
Button has As Kc (two pair, kings and nines).
Outcome: lucky_donut wins 16 BB.
Nice bit of fishing – yay me. It’s close, but the pot’s a bit too big here to give up second pair on the flop even with the two-suited board. After the raise though, I figure I need to improve (unless he’s raising a spade draw), but boy do I… The overcall on the river from the small blind holding top pair and no kicker is pretty nice – he can surely only hope to be splitting this pot three ways?
Preflop: lucky_donut is BB with 7s, Qs.
2 folds, MP1 raises, MP2 calls, MP3 calls, 3 folds, lucky_donut calls.
Flop: (7.50 SB) 9d, 5s, 6c (4 players)
lucky_donut checks, MP1 checks, MP2 checks, MP3 bets, lucky_donut calls, MP1 calls, MP2 calls.
Turn: (5.75 BB) 3d (4 players)
lucky_donut checks, MP1 checks, MP2 checks, MP3 bets, lucky_donut calls, MP1 folds, MP2 calls.
River: (8.75 BB) Qh (3 players)
lucky_donut checks, MP2 checks, MP3 checks.
Final Pot: 8.75 BB
Results:
BB has 7s Qs (one pair, queens).
MP2 has Ad 4s (high card, ace).
MP3 has 8c 8d (one pair, eights).
Outcome: lucky_donut wins 8.75 BB.
Little draw, slightly better draw, oh ok then, top pair will do. I’m getting 8.5-1 on the inside draw, a bit low but with 4 players still in I figure a straight on the turn would be good for at least 2 more big bets. The double-gutshot on the turn has plenty of pot odds though. However when the hand I made was just a pair of queens, I really didn’t know whether to bet this out of position so I craply check – I’m happily calling one bet here but if I bet and get raised things get expensive with a very mediocre hand, totally weak. Figure I probably lost a bet from 88, who might well make a crying call.
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