Thursday, May 24, 2012

Venetian $400 Deep Stack today


Going into today’s tournament I was a little apprehensive.  It has been quite awhile since I’ve played poker and even longer since I’ve played a tournament.  My real job has kept me busy lately.  (Did I just call golf coaching a real job?!  My apologizes to all of you out there with REAL jobs!!)  When the tournament started I looked around my table and saw mostly experienced players.  (You can just tell.)  You really want to see a bunch of amateurs that are going to give their chips away, but you just make do with the situation you are presented. 

I’m happy to announce I played really well today.  I made good decisions, made chips from my good hands, minimized my losses when I was beat and took down a couple important pots with good bluffs when my reads were correct that my opponents were weak.  A couple fun hands from today:
·        with the blinds 150/300/25 a player limped from middle position (mp).  I made it 900 in the cutoff with Ad4d. The small blind (sb) called. His name is Burt Boutin, a professional poker player with 2 WSOP bracelets to his credit.  (just looked that little nugget up on my phone!) The big blind (bb) and the original limper also called.  The pot is now 3850.  The flop was 2d3h8s. The sb lead out a bet of 2500.  The next two players folded.  Usually a lead out bet in this spot is not a strong hand, and when I looked at him he smiled at me as if to say “sorry kid, I hit that flop”. In my experience that look means a pretty weak hand, so I deliberated and raised him to 5700.  He looked agitated but folded his hand after a short period of thought.  If he called and a diamond (d) came on the turn I was putting him all in, and even if he had a hand like TT he would have to lay it down.  I would have been representing a huge hand and he would have had to give me credit.
·        On the next level with the blinds 200/400/50 Mr. Boutin raised from under the gun (utg) to 1100.  It was folded to me in the small blind and I looked down to see AA.  Yes, it looks as pretty at the table as it does when you type it!  I looked at his stack and re-raised (rr) to 3200 and he called.  The pot was now 7300 and we both had about 30000 behind, so my raise made the stack to pot ratio (spr) close to 4:1.  That is a great ratio for AA and now my goal, barring a crazy flop, is to get my chips into the middle.  The flop was KhJh3d.  I checked to him, he bet 6000, I check-raised to 14000 and he quickly mucked his hand.  

During the tournament I send out texts of fun or interesting hands to my poker-playing followers.  Two players on my list are superstar players: Derrick Yamada, whom I’m staying with, and Will Haydon, a former Aggie golfer turned professional poker player and a WSOP bracelet winner.  I get some great feed back while I’m playing from them as well as some other excellent poker playing friends, Gregg and Eric.  On that AA hand Derrick pointed out that a check raise looks super strong and instead of check-raising I could have check-shoved that flop, and maybe my over bet looks weaker to him and he makes a call in that spot with a hand I have crushed.  Whether a different play would have worked better is really irrelevant; the importance is it helps me critically think about the hand in another way that might work better when it comes up again in the future. 

What I noticed today is even though my table was full of experienced players, all but one of them made significant mistakes during hands, and that’s the difference in poker, as in golf, as in life: minimize your mistakes, and if you do make a mistake, experience and adjust and don’t make it again! That’s what we preach as coaches; dentify your weaknesses and make them stronger. Our best golfers are always the ones that identify weaknesses, no matter how small, and fix them.  Poker is the same animal, just with a luck factor.  And now to the luck factor….

With the blinds at 300/600/50, the player on my right opened to 1500.  He came to my table a short time earlier with a lot of chips and was very active.   He had about 33,000 chips in his stack.  I looked down at AK and raised it to 3800.  (A lot of time I will play this hand a bit slower against another deep-stacked opponent, but he was opening so many pots his hand range was very wide and my AK crushes most of his hands.) Everyone folded and he called.  The flop came down K2K – and bingo was his name-o!  The pot was 9000.  He checked and I bet 4200, he called.  The pot is now 17,400.  My goal is to get all my chips in by the river as this is a monster, monster flop for me.  The turn is a 3.  GREAT!  If he did have QQ,JJ,TT,99,88 and was just calling the flop to see what I would do this card certainly didn’t help him.  I bet 11,000 and again he quickly called.  The pot is now 39,400. Did he slow play AA pre-flop and is now just being careful?  QQ?  KQ,KJ,KT? I don’t care – I got him!  The river is another great card, an 8, and he deliberates and checks.  I go all in for his last 13,000 or so and he immediately calls and shows Kc2c!!!  WOW!!!  He made a really bad call pre-flop and really, in my humble opinion, a bad check on the river, because I’m never betting AA, QQ, JJ on the river if he checks and if I have AK, KQ I am never folding when he shoves.  His check only allows me to bluff the river but I’m NEVER bluffing the way I was attaching him to the pot.  SO, he makes two mistakes in the hand, I make none, and he takes down an 80,000 chip pot. 

Two years ago I would have whined to anyone who would have listened, but I’ve learned that poker is brutal and you just have to focus on how you played and plug ahead.  So, I give myself an A- for my first tournament and look forward to tomorrow.  Time for some dinner, then off to find an internet connection to post this.  In the immortal words of Chris Berman:  “They can’t stop me, they can only hope to contain me!”

JWB


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