VC 100K grtd

I spent an enjoyable weekend in leicester, primarily drinking and playing poker with some friends, and met a few people off VC, some of whom i hadn't met before. A great time was had by all, special mention to Pete aka JackOfClubs, who entertained the masses with his drunken antics as usual, and notched up a record number of "falling over " incidents.

After spending the evening and wee hours of the early morning playing out STTS (well done to Leehack for played 2 won 2 record), myself, James (Royal FLush) and Pete (JOC) all retired back to our hotel where Pete crashed out for a well deserved rest and myslef and flushie kicked off a few heads up matches. I didn't manage to improve my recent poor record against flushie heads up live. He is a very observant and calculating player. Whislt i find many players i can slip into autopilot mode during heads up games and quickly home in on their poker weaknesses, whilst playing Royal Flush i need to adapt my game a lot and set him up for plays to get paid off. I still hold the evil eye over him online but have to admit he has been getting the better of me live recently, althought this will change soon fish so watch out!

Anyway after a few hours of play we realised it was about 11 ish and we had to be getting out of the rooms and heading to the station soon, despite having had no sleep! Eventually we crowbarred a slightly mangy and hungover jacko out of his pit and made out way to the station, and i eventually got home to ealing at around 5 or so.

When i got back i thought id have a check of the forums to see if anything interesting had cropped up, and whilst online i had a chat with Leehack who reminded me in no uncertain terms that VC's inaugural 100K grtd tourney was taking place tonight. I was interested to see the standard of play, if it was any better than the usual but I was also feeling pretty rough off the back of a hard nights drinking and poker followed by NO SLEEP, so wasn't too keen on the idea of playing a 15min level blinds tourney with 600+ runners in it. Anyway Lee badgered me a bit till i thought ok, i dont really feel like dipping into 100 of my BR to play a tourney where i stand little chance being in such bad shape, so I'll play a few feeder satellites and see if i can get in on the cheap. I played a few stts but for some reason couldnt seem to hit a thing and before i knew it 3 stts were down and i hadnt even made last 3. I elected to have one more quick shot at a speed tourney satellite and i did, this time winning the tourney, courtesy of a little outdraw against a guy called OUTLAW or something where i riased his blind with J8 and he moved allin and i had the odds to call as he flipped A9 and i outflopped him to win.

So i had done what i set out to do, got myself a cheap entry to the tourney. I elected to not rebuy or addon north star stylee as i was not in peak condition.

The tourney started and i picked up a coupld of smalish pots to give me 2.5K or so. then this hand happened which was a little odd. I am in the small blind and 3 limpers come in and i complete with 94 off.
The flop comes

9 4c 6c

giving mr top and bottom pair but with a potential flush draw out there too. This encourages me to make a decent bet on the flop so i overbet the pot to maybe look like a fl draw, one guy calls. He called quickly as if drawing to something so i pencil him in as a flush draw and decide i will move in on the turn if a blank comes.

The next card out is the

5s

, a useless card to anything but a gutshot draw or 95 or 55 maybe. I move allin, he thinks then calls my allin with 88, so he had picked up a gutshot str8 draw on the turn, but i cannot beleive he called with this hand here. Ok its the rebuy period but it really wasn't a cleverly thought out call. My 94 holds up and im up to 4.6K or so. I then slow down to observe the players a little and i realise the table is stacked with value, and people not playing well. I settle into the game and find a hand or two to lift my chips to 7K. One hand in particular was somewhat fortunate.....

UTG i raise minimum with 86h. A player i know flat calls my min raise and every else passes. Flop comes down 7 5 9 one heart, so i flop the nut str8 with backdoro fk redraw. i bet out abd he he moves all in for anohter 2K or so, i obviously call and he is udnerstandably a little surprised to see the weak holding.........(To be continued............)

The Cat talks poker concepts.

Yesterday was quite an amusing day of poker. Overall i had a good day registering 3 final tables. I was slightly disappointed to finish 3rd 4th and 4th after a couple of tired plays( particularly one where i couldnt lay down KK) but it was nonetheless a profitable day and i ended up about 700 $ up.

Two poker concepts reared their heads during this time and I would just like to share this with you to show the complexity of poker.

First off the bat, in two of the competitions i played in i knocked people out playing VERY weak hands. This disturbed them very much and they frothed and wriggled about, spitting insults as they departed the tournaments, both of them insulting my poker, neither understanding why I made the plays i made.

OK firstly, i am in a 25 FO, blinds are 10/20 and i have already doubled my starting stack of 1.5K to 3.2K or so thnx to some1 who could not let go of AK.

I am on the button with

7s 2s

and several people limp in. some1 with about an 1500 stack in middle position makes it 100 to go.

I call.

Now 72 is an absolutely rubbish starting hand, so why did i call?

OK here are my considerations.

1) I am on the button so I have positioning over the table.

2) His raise whilst it is 4x the BB is essentially meaningless to me, it is 1/32 of my stack to call, i would often call such a raise with poor cards in position as I can lay this down very easily without any significant damage to my stack but may jsut flop a monster.

3) being such a crap hand, the deception factor is VERY large. If i flop a big un....

say the flop comes 227 77x 22 x 72x or such

no one will see this coming and i have a good chance or getting paid off. This is the essence of implied odds. I am paying 100 to see a flop where i could win a 3K pot.

Anyway i call and there are 2 or 3 other callers from the limpers, making the pot around 400 or so.

Flop is a true cracker for me as it comes

6s 8s 9c.

Yes somehow i hit an open straight draw and flush draw. I am in the driving seat here.
Barring another better flush draw being out there(or made str8, again unlikely) i am ahead of virtually all hands here. Checked to the raiser who bets out 450, an overbet of the pot, signalling to me he has an overpair, possibly a set.

Now maybe I should move allin here with the best of it, but i elect not to for a couple of reasons. No 1 I feel i have no folding equity. I feel like he will definitely call so all i am doing is moving in with the slight best of it and playing the pot heads up, which is not really what i want.

My draw is so strong I want other people coming into the pot to boost my pot odds and by calling it is much more likley i will engage some other action.

Also I know that whatever card comes on the turn I will still have a strong enough draw to call him if he moves 1K allin on the turn. This is how it works. Assuming he is Qd Qh or something.....

On the flop I am winning the race...

http://twodimes.net/h/?z=711079pokenum -h qh qd - 7s 2s -- 6s 8s 9c
Holdem Hi: 990 enumerated boards containing 8s 6s 9c
cards win %win lose %lose tie %tie EV
Qd Qh 442 44.65 530 53.54 18 1.82 0.456
7s 2s 530 53.54 442 44.65 18 1.82 0.544

It is not a bad move to move allin here as I am winning and may have some folding equity. I didn't tho for the reasons listed above but just called his 450 bet.

There is now 400 + 450 +450 in the pot, a total of 1300.

Let's say no one else calls the bet and the turn is a dud, say the 3d. Here is the new position.

http://twodimes.net/h/?z=711081pokenum -h qh qd - 7s 2s -- 6s 8s 9c 3d
Holdem Hi: 44 enumerated boards containing 8s 6s 9c 3d
cards win %win lose %lose tie %tie EV
Qd Qh 29 65.91 15 34.09 0 0.00 0.659
7s 2s 15 34.09 29 65.91 0 0.00 0.341

he is limited to betting 1K into the pot, if i call i still have 1750 and i will be paying 1K to win a
1K +1K +1.3K pot, a 3.3K pot. So I can call his allin even if a dud flops on the turn.

SOOO back to the pot. I call. Turn is the 5c, hooray, ive made my str8 with fl redraws.

He moves allin as expected, I call. He turns QQ , no spades (oops did i give that away).
He draws dead on the river and launches a tirade of abuse at me as follows :) (ladies close your eyes)

"How can u play that shit, you won't get any f***g where playing that crap, good luck playing your trash hands you f****g piece of s***t"

LOL i think he loved me really.

"Good luck misplaying your big pairs" I counter jovially which sends him into another asterisk camoflaged outburst.

"F****g disgrace how can I lose? what a f***ing joke. You know nothing about poker u f***g retard noob"

"I know a str8 beats a pair!" - he gave me some more shit and trailed me round a little bit before departing.

This is the key concept he didn'trealise though.

He raised so little preflop that he let me and others in with weaker hands that he was going ot have trouble getting away from if we hit an that is what happened. Barring 100 of his stack he got his money in with the worst of it. Off that flop having raised so little preflop he shouldve been worried that a suited connector or something had hit that dangerous flop. Instead he fired with both barrels even when he may have been drawing dead on the turn.

I've banged on a bit for now, but i will come to part 2 later.

Pot Limit Omaha - CRAZZY

It's funny, i have had some of my msot profitable cash sessions from PLO and register a good hourly rate of 35$ from primarily 0.5/1 and 1/2 PLO. However I can't play it for too long as it drives me insane!!!!!!!

The best games are the loosest ones - i see approx 60% of flops in these games and feel my post flop play is pretty good and enables me to win some big pots when im in gear. However with multiple people seeing flops it tends to result in some extreme variance. I guess if I was a more seasoned player I could take these swings more easily but it just drives me mad sometimes! I am aware I should put a shackle on these feelings and lock them away in some untouched dusty corner of my brain (Jesus there's enough space!) but it is the one game where I can't seem to suffer bad beats as easily.

Most recently i took a beat off a player when i flopped the top set and nut fl draw with

KKAJs

off a

K 7s8s flop

and the pot swelled into a bigun as the other player drew to their gutshot

(they had called my preflop raise with 22 9J)

and had the gall to hit it! The logical part of my brain is cheering as I applaud these fish chasing their -EV longshots but the emotional side of my brain was just crying and i got so emotionally involved with this one particular hand that i forced myslef to take a small break from poker jsut to clear my brain.

I have tho, had some goood sessions recently, registering about a 1.3K profit from the games in the last 5 days so I will return, maybe having had a few more weetabix.