SE Tuesday Night - PP Open Irish Qualifier

ollyk1 wrote:

I'll do Lloyd's report for him upto 11.30pm.

Started off on work tilt.

Progressed to mega tilt for a while.

Finally pushed blind on my BB with J6 when shortstacked and had two live cards and tripled up. PPPspecial gave me a nice double though after the break when I had AA and he had the nut flush draw and after that my tilt magically diasppeared and I settled down to playing some good poker!!

This is surprisingly accurate. I played mad poker up until the first break. Prime example:

25 / 50 - Me(2900), villian (Jackpot regular, bad loose player - sick live tell) makes it 250 second to act. One fold and I call with 88 - we are only two to see flop of 8JA - with what I thought was two hearts. He checks which means he doesn't have the Ace - stuff like QJ and KJ are well within his range so I give him a freecard in the hope to feign weakness like the clever fox I am. Turn is 10h. He bets 400, I reckon he might have made two pair so I repop to 1200 and he goes all in - in such a manner that tells me he has a monster hand (a live tell yearned from playing him on numerous occasions). So - the board has three to a flush with a possible middle pin straight. However, I'm getting great odds and people don't fold sets...whatever - I still fold. He turns over KQ for the straight. I gave him a card to catch up and, as it transpired talking to Olly later, I misread the board. There was a diamond on the flop. So, I made a fold thinking he had made a flush (when that was impossible) even though I was getting the right odds to call with a set anyway. Yea, I was behind - but it was a terrible hand.

The blind gamble before the break meant that I was coming back to a stack of 7,200. Get QQ first hand back and take a few chips with one pre - flop caller who folds to my continuation bet. Get a couple of steals through when I find AA UTG. Make it 1100 (my standard raise size) and get only one caller in the form of Dave Masters on the button. Flop (2650) is 10d8d4h. I bet 2,000 and Dave sets me in after a slight hesitation. I'm always calling. He has AdJd and misses the flush draw. I could see the logic behind his play. I will continuation bet most of the time and if I did happen to have the overpair to the board I was representing; as long as I didn't have AA he would have 12 outs twice. As he had the stack to gamble with me and was running hot so far in the night I don't think it was a bad play by him to set me in.

I had 18,000 after that hand and just ticked along for a while. Got as high as 23,000 before settling on 20,000. I maintained that size (give or take) right up until I hit the final table with 19,000. I just played a very safe, tight game – generally avoiding seeing flops in raised pots - either I did the raising or I checked a blind with numerous limpers - you know. I felt that as I only needed to survive the primacy was on stack maintenance through picking steal spots – I didn’t need to get involved and gamble it up in anyway.

So, final table and I’m shortstacked. Nothing much happens until a bad regular SE player who is comfortably stacked on 45,000 at the 1000/2000 level open pushes onto my blind. I find AQ and eventually decide to call. He has 44 and I win the race on the flop. That put me in a position where I only needed to steal and be smart for a while – which I duly did as eliminations around me took place. To be honest there wasn’t much drama. I gradually chipped up through stealing blinds and defending my own – generally taking pots pre – flop. There was no particularly great poker in there, just a fairly standard shortstack game (Donal having more chips than God meant that everyone else had an average of 12BBs between them from six out). I looked to maintain my position without confrontation.

I did lay down QQ pre – flop. I raise 16,000 from a 56,000 stack at the 2,000 / 4,000 level and Donal sets me in. He had been playing quite tight with no need to get involved and despite the fact that I was raising his blind frequently he had failed to play back at me thus far. Despite my activity, his range here is really narrow. I eventually decided that if he did have AK I could get a ticket without racing and that KK and AA formed the rest of his range for this move. I folded, he said he had KK – I happen to believe him.

Apart from that I folded JJ on my BB to Donal’s raise when we were four handed. I was on 70,000ish and we had a short stack of 21,000 with blinds at 3,000/6,000. As such, I felt I could pretty much fold my way to a ticket from there and had no need to get involved with jacks.

The final hand, the shortstack had worked his way to 30,000 (a dude who played a very good game and was horrendously unlucky with 88 vs Dacman’s J5 – the new aces!!) and he pushed all in on the SB after it was folded to him. I looked down at KQ and figured I crushed his range, plus I still had 35,000 if I lost – so I called and beat his K6.

Absolutely delighted. The stress and tension was unbelievable from 6 out however. Dacman and Donal will play the event aswell, and have the games to do something in it. Something to look forward to over the next few months.

paler wrote:

wp again lads,

I was sure the ticket was mine when that guy turned over J5, doh!! :eek: I was comatose all day wednesday!

Nice fold with the QQ there Lloyd, havent played with Doc before but I don't think theres any chance I would have folded that.

Everyone else thought the ticket was yours as well!!

In a normal tourney I would have beat him in the pot with my QQ. But I wasn't playing for first place and he had his seat locked up. As such, he was under no pressure to make any resteal moves - he had a monster. I figured his range included AA // KK // AK with JJ a distant possibillity. I don't need to gamble against AK as I felt I could fall over the line into a seat with the 10BBs stack I had left after folding. At the end of the day, he might have been making a move - but he had no need to make a move atall which led me to conclude that it wasn't a move...:)

In any case, hard luck man. You played as good a game as any of us. Shame somebody had to miss out - particularly when it was due to a sick beat.