Wednesday 6 October 2010

Circus Nifty Fifty Report

So last night was the second leg of my three leg attempt to win the world. Here's how it went.

Caught up pre game with George Lawson, both Trett brothers and a few others and had some cracking banter as per. My starting table was pretty nice, and easier than the Asper's game. I'm in the 9 hole and the only players I recognise are Simmy in the one seat, Shaf, a circus cash reg in seat ten and Steven the teacher in seat 8.

First hand I find 66 and open the pot to 125 in what is basically the hijack and immediately get 3bet by Shaf to 525. Everyone else folds and I tell him Aces good, fold and he shows AA. Yip. Nice hand sir.

A little later it folds to Stephen in the SB and he completes. He basically dares me to shove. I do with KK. Nice life. He instamucks. Sigh.

I wanna talk about a hand that I wasn't involved in at all, in the first level where I felt both players played it pretty turbo good. Simmy opens the hijack to 200 and gets flatted by CO before button makes it 400. I instaput button on QQ+, caus I think his button min-3bet range in the first level must just be really small, it's almost always a raise to induce. Simmy calls as does the button. At this point we've got a 1275 pot at 25/50 and we didn't see the flop yet. I perk up and start watching more intently.

Flop is JJx and Simmy fires 700 or so, CO folds and Button (who I'm reliably informed is called 'Waspy' and a good UK Circuit pro, but we'll get to that in a bit) calls pretty quickly. Simmy then bets 1500 on the most inconsequential turn ever, like a 4 or something and gets called pretty quickly. The river is an offsuit Ten and Simmy thinks for about 0.3 seconds and just jams 7.5k or so into a 5.5k pot (numbers might not quite add up, but he's definitely overbet the pot on the end).

In my head, this is what happens....."ssssssssssssssssssssssssick, Simmy's fucking flops quads. It's the only hand he can play like this. He almost always VBs all other Jacks a set of Tens for tens full too...wowowowow, he's put V on KK or AA like me (he now can't have queens as he prolly raises the turn and he almost never has a Jack because he'd raise the turn (put a flushdraw out there)) wow, sick, what a great bet. V can almost never put Simmy on a Jack here. Like, never. All his small Jack's he check calls, all his big Jack's he VBs river, not shoved. Sick hand."

V is in the tank, and the longer he tanks the more I rule out KK from his range, he pretty much has only AA now because he's already called with a Jack and already mucked KK. V plays well to pass caus it's really hard to think Simmy has a Jack there and as Simmy goes to muck I say 'show me the quads, Simmy, you had quads, right?' and Simmy, with the most surprised look on his face ever says 'yeah, I did, actually..' and shows em.

Must be nice to deal yourself Quads Simmeister. I actually said to him that I didn't think he had that level. That's such an advanced play to shove the river there because most people would probably check or lead really small looking to get value. The way Simmy and I both thought about the hand (since we discussed it, obv) was that he *never* gets raised on the end, unless V has Tens full, which is unlikly given the min-raise pre and the call on the turn being like instaquick so therefore he can bet like 2500 pretty profitably and gets called most of the time. He can check, but he rarely gets lead into either, I think. So basically a smallish vb of 2000 to 2500 seems optimal, but think of the long term. Effective stacks are like 7500. He only needs to get called with his overshove like 1/3 of the time to make it breakeven cEV-wise when he bets 2500 on the end (assuming V *never* folds) vs 7500. I actually think that he gets called a lot more often than 1/3, and unfortunately Simmy ran into a player capable of making a great fold. Additionally, I feel that since it's so much harder to put Simmy on even a bare Jack with an overshove, vs what it might be with a smaller value bet, that he probably makes 2500 more chips everytime he overbets than when he just leads.

I hope that makes sense.

For my part, I make a nice little stack mainly by reading the game well and valuebetting 4th pair a couple of times, lose a bit back making a slightly lose call with QJcc against AQo AIpF when dude had opened every pot since the start of 200/400. Maybe slightly loose against the range I guess, but I can't raise fold my hand and I'd already raised. Anyway, I go through the blinds and such and I make it to 300/600 when I'm in the BB with 8.5k (never higher than 14k) and Waspy (V from quads hand, covers me by about 6 or 7k) opens to 2k in EMP. He's been pretty tight for a while, but when I look at Aces I don't really start to think about my hand. I wanna play for stacks and the best way to do that is call and jam any nice looking flop. I do, and duely jam on KJx, 2 spades. He calls, after a very long tank, pretty sure I induced it by looking superweak, allsorts of reverse tells going on (looking away then insta-looking at his chips when he put his hand on them, etc) and he announced Merry Christmas ans shows AJdd. Jack on the turn, nice life. Can't win 90%ers. Meh.

I think it's a pretty good call against the range I'm suppose to have there to be honest. Poker's about making your opponent make mistakes and I think he made a pretty big one there, caus of the way I played the hand. Meh, sometimes slowplaying works, sometimes it doesn't. I'm still happy with how I played. Not too happy with how I reacted to the beat. Like a bit of a dick, actually. Sorry Waspy. I find out later he's a UK circuit pro and if I'm making a player of that caliber make a mistake then I'm doing something right.

Bring on Saturday and the longer levels and wowowowowow am I gonna crush. Hard. Suits my game down to the ground.

Tuesday 5 October 2010

Aspers Nifty Fifty Report

So here we are again.

Since I'm moving abroad I'm a complete money nit at the minute, but still really wanted to play the 'big 3' tournaments this month:

1. Asper's Nifty Fifty £500 Added
2. Circus Nifty Fifty £1000 Added
3. Circus Deepstack Fifty £500 Added

With my nitting in mind, I quickly sold some action in the spread of games and once again Nemesis backed me and was joined by Knerrad in completing out the £100 stake at 60/40 return in their favour.

So last night was the first of the spread and I rocked up to get a nice starting table of several retards, one studenty aggro online player, Rosco and Rachel Costa. I'm stuck in the 3 hole between Rosco and Rachel and looking forward to the fun.

Within the first level I 3bet AK twice and fold on Jxx and Qxx boards to retards who so obviously had AJ and KQ that I wanted to spew a little. I'm annoyed and then when I have to fold JJ on a QxxT board against QTo lol I'm down to about 5k from the 8k starting stack and get a little tilty when this hand occurs.

AggroStudent makes it 150 UTG and I pick up two separate weakness tells so folded to me in the Hijack I threebet in the dark. The button (complete looooon, lost most of his stack already) calls and I'm not concerned about him at all. The flop comes down K9Tr and I get checked to. I sneakily checked a peek at 88 and lead 2/3s pot. I get shoved on by the button and, as predicted, the aggrostudent folds. Unfortunately it's only like 90p more into 80mirrrion so I call and get shown K4s. Nice life. 8 on the turn is pretty sweet though.

Still within the first level there are two limpers and Aggro makes it 375 in MP. Rosco flats the SB and I find a nice life with AA in the BB. I make it 1275 and then get a speech about respect from first limper (who folds QJcc...lol pls call?) AggroStudent then tank folds, which annoys me, I thought my 3bet with 88 (he doesn't know I was blind) would get me a 4bet like 80% of the time here. To my absolute surprise Rosco then sticks half his stack in. As Dan Trett said to me last night, I can't really continue in the hand without turning my hand faceup whichever way I play it, so I just jam and somehow Rosco folds. I still don't know what he had, he has to call with like all his bluffs given the odds so I guess it was a hand like QQ/KK since he wasn't getting 4 to 1 to call with those (since I always have AA here). Although I don't squeeze that often, he can be playing smallball with QQ/KK. Flop is AKx anyway so I either get em all or none on the flop so shoving pre prolly the best line.

From then, I go pretty card dead for about 80 years. Standard, and can't find any spots. At the break I have 15k, and after the break I'm just finding onehand per orbit to steal the blinds with, including 64dd UTG+1 which was pretty nice. At 300/600 I call a 4bet jam vs Aggro with AJo (same weakness tell as before) and he shows the same hand, and then at 400/800 I get AQs UTG and run into BB with...AQ lol chop chop...

Anyway, I then open to 2200 with A8ss in the hijack looking for my onehand per round, get shoved on for 4k, call and lose a race vs 55. Down to about 8k at this point which is 10BB with blinds about to go up.  Next round OTB Aggro opens and, again, I know he's weak. T8dd is a standard resteal there, BB passes like AJ and Aggro sigh calls with A9o. I flop the OESD, turn a flushdraw and have 20 outs going to the river. I don't run good enough and I'm out.

Pretty happy with how I played and a couple of times early if boards come Axx (with AK vs AJ) and not Jxx then I get stacks. Just sucks when you can't run well at all (8s aside lol).

Still. Off we go tonight with leg II of Mulhuzz's plan to bink.

Peace,

--huzz

Monday 4 October 2010

T Minus 20 or So Days...

So it looks like I'll be starting in Gibraltar on November 1st, which probably means flying out there in about 20 days time. GG me.