A good weekend. (Long post inc some tournament hands)

Hola,

Figured i'd update with recent poker events.

UEA donkament on friday got 30 runners, again I run like tanni gray. Couldnt win a flip or a 70:30 to save my life. Meh, wwjd. (lol?) Played the 10-10 game and won £40, 4 buyins is always good. Played an interesting hand actually...
4 handed nlh. Am on the bb. to my left is a spewy lag who randomly bluffs, button is a decent thinking player and sb is tight weak. utg limps, thinking button makes it 3x. He knows utg has limped his usual pf raise is 3-4x anyway, so this was a little odd. sb calls, i have AJ and call, utg folds (lol). Board comes A 9 4 rainbow, sb checks. I donk out 70% of pot which is now 17bbs. button flats and sb folds. Turn is a 10, not a great card tbh as various 2-pairs get there, but meh. I check, and he bets 22bbs into 24. I don't really want to raise as I know he's capable of floating the flop and folding here, and think flatting to see what he does on the river is best. I flat, pot now ~60bbs. River is a Q. I check, and he quickly bets 56x. Now he knows I'm quite willing to call down lightish, but this is a biiig bet for a hand trying to extract value. I can rule out AK i thiiink as he raises more pre / prob raises the flop. This goes for big pairs too. So his range is kinda limited to 44 99 A10, sometimes AQ although again i think this opponent raises flop. 44 99 A10 probably dont bet that much either as he knows my range here is pretty wide, hence his hand looks much more like a bluff. I also don't think he's quite good enough to know this and overbet with nut hands thinking I can figure his line to be a bluff too. So after talking out loud for a fair while I call, and he mucks saying he should stop floating. Lol.

So after this I was really up for NPC and the .50 1 game, as was making all the right decisions. Sat with 50. Stack is ~40, JB raises to 3, turk calls and i call behind with position and Jd 10d. Blinds call too, pot ~15 and i have ~35 behind. Board comes 8d 7c 3d. So gutty, fdraw and 2 possible overs. blinds check, jb leads for 7, turk flats. Turks range is 23+ here lol, and jb can have two paint cards through to AA here, so is definately a good spot to ship, so i ship 35 into ~30. jb snaps and turk folds, jb has QQ and i brick out.
Reload for 50 and instantly get a semi-cooler. jb raises the c/o to 3.50, turk calls on button. I should probably make it 12 here with AK but decide to get tricky and flat hoping turk will stack off. pot is 10ish. Board comes K J 5 rainbow, i check, jb bets 7, turk folds. This is an interesting spot as jb loves to bet hard with annny pair including 88 etc here against me oop, and will also fire 3 barrells. I flat. Turn is a Q, not exactly a great card. I check call 16 given his range, leaving 25 or so behind to check call most rivers. Maybe i should ship here as he probabyl calls with J10 Q10 AJ AQ 1010 etc though. River is a brick, i check and he checks behind with JJ. Hero read me for a gutshot it seems ;) we'll lose the minimum lol.
Get the 25 up to 90 by shipping with top pair and someone missing their straight draw ( J 4 5 board, they had 23o!) then bluff catching against a guy who loves to draw...cheers for the extra £15.
Joe and Jeal walk over, and I look down at 8s 10s in late posish. Chris limps in ep, and dannii makes it 3.50. Her range is AQ+ here, and only has 12 behind. However, i know the blinds are calling / cb is deffo calling and has me covered, so dont mind a call. low and behold, both blinds call and so does chris. pot is 16. the blinds both check DARK, as does chris. dannii then ships 12 all in blind, am im first to act. We'll take a shitload of equity for free, tyvm.
Board comes 7c Jh 9c...i appear to have the current nuts. I think like i have a draw and smooth the 12. The blinds fold, then chris makes it 30 more. He always has J10 / 79 and maybe a hand like QJcc here, so i ship for 40 on top, and he calls with J9. Dannii is already drawing dead, so me and chris run it once for the 210ish pot. Hello Jc river, goodbye big pot. Standard.

This sends me to the rail and thus onto HU online where i got slaughtered. Joe was railing me, I think he wants to learn a bit more hu, it would help the endgame in sngs obv. I made a semi-hero call with 64 on a K 9 2 4 two hearts board when i was pretty sure he had a draw (he check called then shipped the turn, indicative) and he had 102hh for a pair and draw. I was only a 70% fav, and again fail to hold. Then played a sick pot with Q10dd where we got in 15% of stacks on the flop Q 8 2 one diamond flop, then the rest on the Jd turn. I checked the turn -pot 400 ish- and he bet 400, i shipped for 1.1k saying to joe he'll call with any Q here and he snaps with Q7 no diamond. Hello 7s on the river for him to scoop. Then had standard AQ vs kk aipf with 10bbs (couldnt suck out). Then 1010 vs A7 which i lose. Then AQ vs AA on a Q high flop in a sng when i was admittedly a bit tilted. Then dropped 10 on cash before Joe (hero) noticed my suboptimal play, and we stopped -$80. Variance I know, but sick nonetheless as in the poker soc email i said how much will i win/lose friday night - monday morning online, lol.

Saturday didnt play, did MSc application stuff, wathed ipswich on the tv (great performance, sick 3rd goal) and then headed to gfs for wine + films. Watched a beautiful mind, john nash ftw. She met my parents late last week too, went really well so at least im running good there!

Me and J10 (luke) did mandarin stuff on sunday daytime, with a view of eating dinner then playing the partypoker student freeroll together / i'd grind HU. Went out of the freeroll super early bluffing, so got on the grind. Won 7/9hu, but played some tournaments + rake to only be up $10. Then started to go deep in the 11pm midnight oil (midnight EU time, 266 runners, $20 buyin) on ongame, has 900 added in tournament tickets so is good val. 1500 at 12 min levels + standard is pretty bad, you can easily locate players to avoid.
Ended up 4th for ~$350 + a $100 tournament ticket. Played pretty well tbh, will list some key hands:

1) Haven't played a hand the whole tournament and get dealt KK on button. utg limps, late position limps (he's pretty laggy but not picking his opponents too well from what ive seen). I make it 155, blinds fold and they both call. Board come Q 7 3 two spades. Checked to me, i think and bet 310 into 500. Utg flats, bb takes a small amount of time and ships. Hello semi bluff squeeze imo given the player type, utg was loose passive and has AQ best here i think so its an easy call. utg folds and lag has Q8clubs. He doesnt hit his 5 outs and am up o 3.6k

2) 25-50, 3.5k stack. Raise to 150 utg+1 with KJo. I know this is an obvious fold, but my image was super rocky and the play at my table was so bad i thought it could be +EV to play a few more pots, even if oop. c/o and button call, blinds fold. Board comes K 8 7 two clubs. This is an interesting spot..was listening to joe seebok/gav smith/court harrington on prr the other day where joe had KQ in a similarish spot, so decided to play it like court suggested instead of stacking off like Joe did when the guy had flatted with AK. So i checked, and they both checked behind. C/o was a pretty active player ftr. Turn comes a brick, and i lead for 295 into 500. c/o makes it 750 to go with 1.1.k behind, button folds. I speak to jon who's playing with me alongside j10, and reason behind shipping here. Am pretty sure he's bluffing most of the time, or semi bluffing with random 7/8/draw hands. If he has 22 gl to him, but you cant worry about it! So i ship, and he tanks (we know at this point he's folding :) )..so 750 extra chips my way thanks to checking the flop.

3) Moved table directly after, a guy 3 to my left is the definition of dead money. No idea of position, limping atc, randomly betting, terrible. I have a tad over 5k. Blinds 25 50, i raise lp with him in the sb with As 4c. He calls, as does another. Pot 500. Board comes K 7 4 all spades. He leads for 200. His range is basically a bare 4/ flushdraw + here, so i flat. Pot 900. Turn is the 2d, and he bets 500. I dont want to raise as he can have atc here and dont want to fold hands i beat, plus pot control etc, so flat. River is the 10h and he bets 900. If i call I've lost a fair chunk of my stack with a pair of fours, but he was so random that i think its a call itlr getting a big price. I call, he had 8c 2s for a 2 high flush draw that ran into a pair..gg mate lol.

Every hand after that was standard, putting me on 12k or so. I think all were without showdown actually, or at least I was never calling thinking I could be behind.

This is where I started to run standard Adam. With blinds at 300-600 people would ship for 3k in lp, i'd call with AJ in the bb and their KQ would hit. Or, they'd ship for 2.2k and i'd be forced to call with KQ...and their A7 would hold. I kept grinding back to 10k w/o showdown, then got past the bubble (40). Payoffs between 40-20 are the same (breakeven) and before you know it we're down to 23. I now have 11k at 500-1k. One ok player at my table keeps raising just over min to take down blinds, understandable. He does it to my BB, amking it 2.4k with 16k behind. I ship for about 9k more cos of my bb being in, giving him about 1.3:1 to call. He thinks then calls with AQ. A slight hiccup since I have 82 offsuit. So am 67:33 dog, destined to lose given how I had been running the whole tournament. Board 552..me and jon start shouting...A on turn, i shout FUCK OFFFFFFF, prolly waking up J10s house, sorry. 20:1 shot 2-ball rolls off on the rivvvv, me and jon celebrate by more shouting. Good times.

Two hands later i make it 2.5k with A6spades in lp. big stacked BB calls. Flop Q J 9 one spade, which i think is basically his range in this spot and im geting checkraised a ton here, so when he checks i check behind. Turn is another Q, but the Qs giving me a nut draw, and he checks again. I bet 3k thinking im now taking it down, and he oddly flats. River is a beautiful 8s, so now his bare-10's all get there. But he checks again. Pot is 10k, i have a tad over 15k behind. I say to john that he must be check calling with a hand like pocket 7's here as i think a 10 leads/ a Q raises the turn...weird. So instead of betting 7-8k i bet 5.6k...he tanks and calls with 77! ship it perfect bet size!

Down to 14 handed and im on 30k at 1k-2k, about 2-3rd in chips. I get onto the final table with 60k without showdown. We'll exploit the bubble for fun, i think Owe will agree i played the FT bubble reaaaaaally well. K4s utg raising, the lot.

Then a sick hand happens. Blinds on FT are 2k 4k, 10 handed. But $100 tournament entry added prizes only start at 9th, and the people with 12k are just folidng out to these cos 10th pays 60...9th the equiv of 190! Given this, the hijack raises to 8k and the really loose-passive c/o flats. Im on the button with 99. I love/hate this spot, as raising the 22k and taking it down puts me on 85k and a decent CL. Hijack has 40k total, so if he reships i have to call getting 4:1. I eventually make it 23k and he does indeed ship, and thus i call leaving myself 16k. He has KK and of course holds, and i am pretty hacked off. I say to jon we're folding to 9th, then get 1010 utg and ship our 16k in. Really tight mp player reships for 35k, then the short small blind who has me just covered so would get 9th if we both go out calls ffs! The tight mp player has 55, shocked the crap out of me, and the other player has AK. the board comes 10 high and me and john wake up the house again, lol. Back up to 45k. Lose KQ vs AJ for 30k standard pot when i was in the bb, keeping in the guy who eventually won it. Get down to 5 handed and am on 60k w/o showdown, then knock out the 10k shortstack when his Qd10d doesn't improve against my AA..even though he flops a flushdraw nd turns a gutshot, will i ever not get a sick sweat ffs?!
On 80k, the sb makes up and i check QJo in the bb. Flop J 7 3 two clubs, he bets 8k and i flat. (We had one hand like this previously where he bet the turn too and i folded.) Turn is the 8c, and he bets 16k. Again, its an easy card to bluff at, and I call - Owe agrees. River is a brick and he now bets 24k. If i call i have 20k left. Again, based on history its a call, and he has 78 for a turned 5-outer. Standard I guess, I dont think many people play it much different, just a shame to get in-a-way coolered when 4 handed. Then shipped K7d on the button for 17k a hand later, bb is committed with Q8 and it runs K Q 3 Q x, see you later. If the HU pot goes differenly I should really come 2nd/win, so was a 300-700$ turn card, but there you go.

Also found some random RB in the cashier window thingy, so roll now on $930 + $100 ticket.

Wd Mark for your solid example of BRM.
Wd Owe for not being too much of a pescado at the Casino.

This week: Tonight will play for a bit, tomo busy all day, wed seeing an old friend then seeing gf pm, thurs is J10's 21st bday shindig so meal + club, then friday playing the tournament at NPC + meeting up with Chal for a pint beforehand, should be good!

Tc / run good all

-Adam

Edit:

www.ueapoker.co.uk/ueapt GOGOGO lol!

Also, looking to play events 8, 9, 10 and 22 in the starts SCOOP series. (low buyin section obv)...may look to do a couple of 10% swaps with people if interested.