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Fitz: Sunday 18th...
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19-04-2004 1:27pm#1Join Date:Posts: 29920
Noone would deal with me on the last table
... so I had to bust them all. 
*ahem*
Rack me up for another 850 notes as outright winner and spank me surprised
What a nights fnckin' poker. Hellova story... all I got all night was mid pair, I was f*ckin tired playing them to be honest! Later in the night they improved to AA twice and KK's twice, each time they stood up too. I defintely got cards to play.
I slow played KK's early on cos I didnt want to just take the blinds with them which is all I would have gotten... the flop comes K99, turn and river are rags and I'm checking for all I'm worth and induce an all in from a respected opponent. I call as fast as I can without seeming indecently hasty... He turns to me, shows a king and says "what kicker do you have" and I sheepishly say "er, another king" :
The dealer at our final table said he doesnt see the kind of play and tension at the final table of the big game. There wasnt one inch of ground given and a lot of rough and tumble betting going on. I didnt much like it when it got down to 4-way as I dont have a huge amount of experience short handed. One of the guys there is a good mate of Normans, has played with me a few times before and has NO respect for my play and to be fair I have hardly given him reason to respect me as I've played badly against him.
The other two I can contain or at least read.... this guy I cant and he's all over me. Steals my big blinds 3 times in a row with big bets that I havent the balls or the cards to call. Every bet I make he's going over the top and *I'm* the big stack at this point!! I really get annoyed by this and with myself for betting stuff I cant see through. Here's a tip that I've learned the hard way at final table, if its not worth seeing it all the way to All-in, its not worth raising cos thats very likely where you are going to end up and you'd best be ready for it. I lost 20K in 4 hands learning that the hard way last night.
So, yer man is wrecking my head and the trash talk starts. I politely joke that I thought I had him on one pot where I showed the nuts after he folded a biggish bet and he says "you dont have what it takes to have me" and I dumbly thought he was talking about chips and say that I think I have him covered to which he says "I didnt mean it like that" rather abruptly. Now I like banter and Norman and I took lumps off each other last Wed but this is a wee bit darker and nastier. It gets a good bit worse too as he sniggers into his chips everytime I back out of (another!) stupid limping raise.
I turn around to him and say "I'm going to bust you out of this tournament. I just want to be sure you know that." with as much comical bravado as I can muster and everyone politely laughs but the two of us have locked eyes and I stop smiling a fraction too soon.
More trash talk about watching too much telly etc... (he starts on about how I must have read a book or gone to the beginners poker school etc) I dont mind people trashing me directly but a lot of it was to the other two players rather then me (I'm massive chip leader at this stage, maybe 3-1 on each of them)...I know I'm inexperienced and thinking my way through each hand rather then playing it from experience and they all know it too. I cant survive the table image so I change tack and go ballistic. Cue everyone getting out of N00b's way.
Then the hand of the night happens afaics.. I have J9 diamonds. I call and for once he doesnt go over the top. Flop comes 10xx and no diamonds. I check, he bets 20K and I call. Call! turn brings an Ace (still no diamonds) and I go all-in. My heart is beating so hard I wonder briefly if thats good for my leg!! He thinks and thinks and thinks and eventually shows his hand to the dealer and folds a 50K pot to me. I'm so high on adrenaline I cant talk. I flip over my cards and fling them into the centre onto the board cards and noone says a goddamn word! Not one word, not even the dealer and we proceed onto the next hand but you could have cut the air with a knife.
The two of us whittled down the other two and took one scalp each but by that stage I had 95K to his 30 odd and waited for a hand. I got it, 72o... I play it, dont ask me why. Flop comes J72. He has a jack and its all over. Hey... dont look at me like that... they have to win sometime!
I think I learned as much last night as I have learned since starting to play this game... an absolute education. Davey, I'm chasin ya!
DeV.0
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Join Date:Posts: 29920
FTFHOS??
Yeah, when I made that (stupid, crazy all in) call with Jim with KJ suited I really should have been walking but I got lucky with the straight. After that I never really looked back... I always seem to need a win like that to get me going... it was the hand with LaFortezza and Decker the last time, one hand when you start thinking, I can win this thing!!
My only regret is that I cant make the wednesday game to try for three in a row!
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Join Date:Posts: 29920
Huckleberry writes:
Don't make me change my sig DeV....
No no no... I'm still the loveable lucky rookie we've all come to know...they thought that too of course but WE know its really true neh? You can be safe in that knowledge... keep repeating it in fact....Who was the guy who was giving you all the abuse? Norman's mate? Give us a good description...
Normans mate was actually very cordial and polite after the game (though I gave him a genuine compliment when we shook hands). He is a big lad, roughly the same size as Vivian, clean shaven, tight (possibly number 1) haircut to hide the fact he's going a bit bald. He wasnt at my table at all until the end. I think he was on your right at the last table Samson.
Muso, he was sitting to my right when you walked in at the start of the night at the coffee area. I think I'll get a bit more respect next time from him. You could see he really thought I was going to lose all my chips any hand now.... which made it a lot nicer to win. Hellova player though, I've played against him before and he's more aggressive then Mike Tyson if he thinks you are weak.
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Join Date:Posts: 29920
You think I dont know that?
For me table image is crucial to my play. How do others see me? Do I need to change that or can I take advantage of it.... It often amazes me that people who spend a LOT of time worrying about facial tells etc then just hand away information about how they view you and consequently how they will play against you.
You think I'm a Newbie maybe you'll bully me... so I'll play tight wait and trap you. (Favourite move actually). Or you think I'm a Rock.... so I'll pick my times and enthusiastically go all in when I think you didnt get as much of the flop as you'd have liked. You think I'm crazy loose, then I'll play that up but in reality I'm playing tight and only showing the bluffs...
Those three times he stole my blinds, I had nothing. Really poor hands and no matter WHO you are, you cant make a silk purse out of a sows ear. I needed something in my arsenal of tricks for when I had a poor hand and frankly I didnt have the balls for it until Hulk Got Mad and I started to change my usually polite and odds-oriented game into a full on bollox-out fnck-you game of head wreckage. I've never played like that before as its just not my style. When I played the J,9 I was sooooo far on tilt I was a bleedin pinball machine. I wanted not only to hurt him, I wanted to seriously damage his stack and do it so he knew it, I knew it and everyone else at the table knew it. Hence why I picked my time and wrecked my table image of Newbie Rock (who knows only one way to play) by turning over the J,9. After that there wasnt any more stealing and I got a few callers for my big hands. I needed to wreck the table image I had before because while it had served me very well for a while, short-handed it was doing me damage.
Am I afraid of these guys? Any decent snowboarder will tell you that those No Fear t-shirts are for idiots. Fear is important. You can get VERY hurt on a snowboard (and I can tell you that first hand!). The right mentality is: Feel the fear and do it anyway.
I'm afraid of Norman and co because they are damned good players. Give them half an inch and they will gut you like a fish. I showed a bit of trepidation against them and it took a great deal to reverse that. I was lucky I could even do it at all....
So I give them a healthy dose of respect mixed with an understanding of how they play against me...
Fear is there for a reason, it tells you that there is danger nearby... danger is the possibility of damage... damage is something you need to avoid in tournament play... sorry if that sounds like Yoda, its not, its my painfully self-thought-out approach to this most intriguing of games...
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Join Date:Posts: 29920
You think I havent been asking myself that question repeatedly!!?
Jeez, I dunno... I'm no guru but I have learned a lot from players here and in the club from things that have been said. I've changed a few things in my game... If you put a gun to my head and forced me to make a list it would be...
1. Not losing chips is more important then winning them. I made that mistake a LOT. Look at Mr Pudding he never seems to really get involved in the dramatic hands but when you look at him next time, he seems to just have amassed chips by sheer will alone. (either that or he has a big bag of them under the table and is slipping them in on the quiet!)
2. Be patient, especially at the start... what is the point of putting half your chips in preflop with 77 when the blinds are 10-25. Whoopie, you won 35 chips but you risked getting mauled by someone with AK or worse, 99!
3. Step Away From The Hand!! Be prepared to put pretty hands down. The most trash talk I get from the regulars is a sort of snigger when I walk away from a hand. If someone wants to slag you over an action its because they dont like you doing it and want you to stop
3.5 Corallary: Its chips that count, not the number of hands won.
Even if you were winning, even if the guy at the end of the table turns over 72o... so what, you let him have a few chips... if he's consistently doing that, you'll have those chips and more back soon enough in one disaster hand for him.
If the pot is small... why bother a big risk!? Let him have it, congratulate him on aggressive play and getting the cards etc... lie about what you had, tell him you put down a big hand out of respect, anything to keep him doing it until you trap him and bust him. So what if he took the blinds... next time he does it and you have a big hand, you'll bust him far worse...
4. Tournies are marathons, not sprints. Think long term, not about individual hands.
5. Recognise when its time to change gear (especially at second lst table... I fnckin' HATE 2nd last table). If you play rock tight with high blinds, you're going home.
6. Always make a deal on last table unless you are chip leader by a good bit. Its a lottery really and 1/3rd of the top three places is a mile ahead of 3rd place and usually ahead of 2nd place too so the odds favour making a deal.
7. Internal Confidence. You need it. I've seen people defeat *themselves* rather then anything I've done. They just didnt have the danglies to put it all on the line when they should have. Much as I have learned that discretion is the better part of valour, you cant walk away from the big hands all the time. You have to be ready to make a big move when its right. Deciding when its right... ah thats the game innit
8. External Confidence. One thing I've noted, which I honestly dont understand, is that people react to my body language and general attitude. Luke, you've commented on it before. You said you could "see that you were going to go all the way"... I've noticed it now on all of the last three games... when I'm confident it shows through (and I know ensure it shows through!) and it affects the other players FAR more then viceversa... I play an odds game, I look at probabilities, pot odds and flavour that with anything I know about that player... how they are acting (as opposed to *playing*) doesnt really come into it for me that much. But I noticed that when I'm gee-ed up about a game they part from their cards like the Red Sea! After the J,9 hand I was well bouyed up and started to hum Metalicas: I Disappear to myself... I was even finger drumming on the leather part of the table... I was just happy, but the effect on them was striking, even though I'd just shown a TOTAL bluff, I could see at least two of them dropping hands they probably should have played since I was only calling the blinds...
9. Patience... I spent over an hour almost without playing a hand early on the other night... a pair should come every 17 hands but I got jack squat! I have learned to just sit there and be patient... not something that comes naturally...but I had an epiphany that night. I was bored and was tired throwing back hands so I did the maths on the blinds to amuse myself. The blinds rise every 15 minutes... that means in the first hour they are up to 75/150. You get maybe 30 possibly 40 hands an hour (though that would be a LOT)... which means you are being asked for both blinds a maximum of 4 times an hour on a table of 10, thats one of each blind at each level (roughly)... or 10+25+25+50+50+100+75+150 = 485... Or half of your stack.
One win will pay that and you will be BB 4 times anyway! So sit and wait for your hands (in 40 hands you should be getting 10 playable hands, even playing tight but if you only get 5 then only play 5 and win 3 ), manage your chips and play when you are ahead. It sounds simple but its the hardest thing I've had to learn because I *love* this game, I really get a kick out of being in there and being a player... I dont go to the club to sit and watch the walls but thats exactly what you should do (actually you should be watching the other players and the play but you know what I mean )
So thats what I've learned recently. Also my dire run of luck seems to have decided that breaking my leg was enough for the moment and the cards have been kinder then usual (which wouldnt be hard to be fair!)
I think moving to the 20-in game suits me much more then the freeroll too, I still havent had a lot of luck in that game...
DeV.
ps: sorry about the essays recently, I'm bored and have fnck all to do here with this leg! 0 -
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Join Date:Posts: 29920
Says the man who only plays Aces. Suited!
Tight Agressive is the best way to play a table where you cant really bluff people out of it but it wont get you further then 2nd last table imho. After that you need to change gear as the number of players drops to 5 and the blinds become worth stealing and the pots worth being in for with a half decent hand!
I'm not above thieving all the same but that huge takedown you pulled off pre-freeze out? well later in the tournie its worth a single small blind (maybe a big blind even!). Save your tricks until they pay handsomely as you can only pull some of them once
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Join Date:Posts: 29920
Blinds have nothing to do with the ratio of chips to players. They are time based.
You never hear people complaining about the blinds coming round again at the start of the night, thats because they have 1000 chips to a big blind of 25 chips. 40:1
I've often seen blinds of 4000 with a full last table... are you going to tell me that the average stack on that table is 160,000? (40:1) ?? even if its down to 5 players the blinds are almost always 4-6000.... none of those 5 players will have 160,000 in a stack. My final complete stack on Sunday was 130,000 and the blinds were 10K... 13:1 and I was the only one left!!
The average chip count can be worked out from the prize money (and you *should* work it out, its a valuable statistic). From that and the number of players left you can tell if you are ahead or behind the average.... Most 20-in nights the chip count is around the 130,000 mark so the final table forms with most players having between 10K and 20K.
The blinds rise much faster then the stack accumulate, making thieving more profitable later on in the night...
If they only rose in ratio to the players you would get to a stage where you had 5 people just moving chips around and noone getting knocked out so the blinds wouldnt rise and it would become a stalemate more or less...
(I should *charge* for this kind of tuition
)
DeV.0 -
Originally posted by DeVore
Says the man who only plays Aces. Suited!
Tight Agressive is the best way to play a table where you cant really bluff people out of it but it wont get you further then 2nd last table imho. After that you need to change gear as the number of players drops to 5 and the blinds become worth stealing and the pots worth being in for with a half decent hand!
I'm not above thieving all the same but that huge takedown you pulled off pre-freeze out? well later in the tournie its worth a single small blind (maybe a big blind even!). Save your tricks until they pay handsomely as you can only pull some of them once
DeV.
A joke. Just a joke. Have we lost our sense of humour on the poker board? Anyway I'm not sure I know what pre-freezout thingy you're talking about?0 -
Join Date:Posts: 29920
I sure you remember it, its where I give you lots and lots of chips and have to keep calling that nice lady over who gives me more.
Its just before the bit where I stand up and say "Thanks for the game lads"....
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