So after taking 3 days off from poker, I return determined to go deep in a $1500 double shootout tournament. The structure of the shootout was the 720 entrants were placed at 90 tables of 8, the final person remaining at their table will then combine to make a 9 person inal table. Easy enough. I was very psyched up after my PLO wins and felt if I played a controlled aggressive style I would be able to go deep. Problem was I thought the shootout was NL, when in fact it was limit. Wow, I havent played limit in over a year, not to mention what a snorefest filled with people calling one bet to the river to try to fill their gutshot. But it was the only tourney starting and I was raring to go. I register and have an hour to kill. I walk over to the vip lounge where I just walk str8 in. Their is a putting green setup where Phil Ivey is betting Phil Helmuth for $5k per put. Somehow Helmuth wins $15k off of Ivey, must have been a handicap, b/c I saw Helmuth overshoot the hole a few times. I get on back to the poker room and find my table. I am the first one there (about 10 mins before the start). It seems that the players strive o be seated right when it starts. Maybe they feel the more apathy they show regarding The tourney the better they will be perceived, I dunno. Table starts filling up, one pro at my table TJ Cloutier. Those that might not be familiar with Tj, he is part of the old guard. He is about 60 and has put together an impressive resume of deep tournament finishes and wins over his long career. He has also published several books on poker. However the years havent been kind to TJ, and he gambles much more than he wins. He is known to be a big craps degenerate, and has resorted to asking anybody who would listen to stake him in tourneys or lend him money for craps. A lot of the pros are staked in tournaments but Tj is different in the sense that he is no longer a favorite to go deep, and people stake him more out of pity than +EV. LLet me tell you that limit holdem makes for a very boring tournament at least in the early rounds when the blinds are low. Like the others at my table I saw a lot of cheap flops in the beginning. I did get lucky and managed to be chip leader after about 2 hours. I had KQ diamonds on a 2 diamond flop. Three others in the hand and I kept on raising my draw. The 5th diamond hit the river and had two callers as I turned over the 2nd nutz. I did see tj speak to a few people that walked by he seemed to know. One left after giving him a few c-notes. Our table was down to 4 at the dinner break and I was still chip leader. Hmmm maybe there is something to this limit. After a steak sandwich and a beer (who says the poker players dont eat training food) I return ready to start to bully people around. The blinds are high enough now where each bet made is significant, and my image up till now has been somewhat on the tight side. I start in right away collecting the pots on the first 4 out of 5 hands I play without showing my cards. Tj told me I "should be careful". A few witty remarks about his gambling habits didnt leave my mouth, and I just nodded knowingly. I knock out a 30 something neuro-surgeon on a series of check raises then hitting a 4th 10 on the river to make quads . Tj stack hasnt gained any traction and he has tried to pull a few unsucessful obvious bluffs. I send him to the $5 craps table when I get him all in preflop with my AJ vs his QQ and flop JJx. He is a gentleman shakes my hand and says" good luck". I am now heads up against a software designer from Seattle, with a 2:1 chip lead. I lose a monster hand when I have J-10 on a J-10-4 board. Action was 3 bet preflop. 4-bet on flop (Obvious over pair). The turn brings a harmless 3 and I check raise, river is a dreaded 4,,,yuch. I check, he bets I have to call and he turns over KK. My 2 pair was counterfeited ( the worst way to lose a hand). I am now behind almost 2:1 in chips and I tilt off the rest of my chips in less than 10 hands. I suck! Next and final write-up, satellites and the Main event.
Good stuff GS. Keep 'em coming. Hell, if the poker doesn't work out you have a career being a commentator!
Gun, Here's my exciting poker story to share - today I played in a local poker tourney at a home days festival. $50 buy in, $25 rebuy (unlimited in 1st hour and one more in the 2nd hour). The first hour I didn't have much to play and played a whole 2 rounds. Won one, lost one. Ended up needing to rebuy w/in the first hour. Total cost now at $75. After the break and into the 2nd round (only one re-buy allowed), I was doing ok but got caught and ended up needing to rebuy one more time. And from there it looked bleak until I caught some nice cards and was able to slowly build back up. Ended up making to the final table of 10 players. I am about average stacked at this point. Big/small blinds quickly force you to make some decisions and I won some nice sized hands to take the chip lead. And then 'my moment' happened. I am last to act. First guy folds. 2nd guy makes decent bet. 3rd guy goes over the top, I think assuming no one else would come is as there was A LOT of folding going on. 4th folds. 5th is short stacked and goes all in. 6th & 7th calls, not all in (yet). I'm sitting there with pocket A's. I just go all in as my hands nervously shake. Everyone that is not all in, goes all in and since I am big stack, if I win, 4 people are done. And that's what happened! My pocket rocket's held up and in one hand, I eliminate 4 people. Wow, what a rush. I know. This was a small local tourney with little money at stake, but for a guy like me that does not play much, it was a rush to be sitting there with pocket A's and all these bets are going into the pot. I couldn't believe it. I thought when I got them that I'd be lucky to get 1 person to play the hand with me. I ended up tying for 1st.... I eliminated the 3rd place guy and the guy remaining and I just split the 1st and 2nd place money in half instead of playing heads up. It was his idea, and while I had a few more chips, I was ok with that as I suck at heads up. I have a lot of work to do on how to play heads up. End result - cost was $100, walked out with $700. Not bad for a little local tourney! ------------- As a side note, I really enjoy the rush of playing poker. There's obviously some similarities to trading, but there's some distinct differences as well (esp playing in person) and it's fun. I enjoy it. One of the guys at our table mentioned that he had played in a $1500 tourney in Vegas recently and it sounded like a nice tourney. I like the tournament style better than joining an existing table and seeing what you can do (which is what a lot of these local festivals are like).
Gun - how many players are there usually at those $1500 buy in's? Do you like playing in those tourneys?
Congrats on your win. Doesnt make that much of a dif if it is a $20 or $2000 buyin, in that situation having your Aces hold up against 4 players is pretty awesome. There is a great feeling of making a final table in any poker tourney. The pluses of playing tournies verse the cash games is your downside is limited and if you get a good run, your upside is way higher. The downside is obviously the variance. Relating it to trading, playing a tourney is like trading the option, where as the cash game is trading the stock. If the $1500 was part of the WSOP played at the rio there were prob b/w 2500-3000 entrants, usually paying the top 10%. The key thing to look for in an upcoming tournament is the blind structure and starting stack. The more chips you start with and the slower the blinds increase, the better for the more skillful player. A quick structure results in an "all-in or fold" type play as the blinds will become to high relative to your stack to really "play". Unfortunately most smaller tournies are structured this way so it will end in a reasonable amount of times
??? Hellmuth crashes a stock car into a concrete pillar practicing in a parking lot cuz he wanted to show up to the main event that way. Since he wrecks the car, he has to show up in his usual limo instead... BUT STILL DECIDES TO WEAR THE "HELLMUTH NASCAR OUTFIT". Did I see him have a helmet with him as well??? Plus he had a sore neck from the crash. How much more embarrassing of a situation could he put his self in? I guess getting knocked out early would do it. Did anyone see him crash the car??? LOL!
Jz - I did see that, pretty funny. He's an interesting character - when things are going his way, he's on top of the world. In this last tourney, he kept bitching about the 'idiots' at his table... He just didn't get it going at all and it was everyone else's fault but his own.